The series of 16 landscape paintings, by Singaporean painter Wyn-Lyn Tan, comprise a panoramic terrain of mountains and seas that evince a tension between abstract and naturalistic visual idioms. Rendered in acrylic washes that approximate a sfumato effect, each painting is composed of five to nine layers of thin washes and marks, with the mountain shapes produced by utilising stencils cut out from Chinese rice paper. The paintings are also presented continuously, akin to a horizontal Chinese scroll, slowly unfurling across a length of lateral space. As the viewer makes his or her way down the series, the process becomes a progressive journey through time and distance – both in the narrative and literal sense. Tan’s aesthetics result from of a combination of training in both traditional Chinese ink painting and Western painting; her sensibility is also the result of undertaking numerous artist’s residencies in the Northern hemisphere, where the landscapes of the latter connect with the sense of stillness and emptiness found in Chinese landscape painting.

Wyn-Lyn Tan (b. 1974, Singapore) was trained as a painter in both the Western and Chinese styles, but also incorporates components of video and installation. She is known, in particular, for a consequential body of work based on her time spent in a residency program in Svalbard, in the Arctic circle, aboard a specially outfitted vessel. Her works have been exhibited in China, Iceland and Singapore.

Images courtesy of the artist.