Singaporean artist and filmmaker Ho Tzu Nyen creates works that are fields of concrete sensations. In association with Sydney Festival 2011, Artspace presents the first major exhibition of his work in Sydney.
Curated by Artspace Executive Director Blair French, the exhibition features three major video works – NEWTON (2009), ZARATHUSTRA: A FILM FOR EVERYONE AND NO-ONE (2009/2010) and the centrepiece 42 minute work EARTH (2009/2010), a ‘videographic’ remix of primarily seventeenth and eighteenth century Italian and French paintings in which the human body is penetrated, fragmented and re-arranged.
Ho Tzu Nyen creates audio-visual artworks that translate and compress biographies, philosophical ideas and scientific anecdotes into highly staged and choreographed ‘text-less’ images and sounds that seek to communicate at the level of the nervous system. He makes projects that have been presented in cinemas, galleries and theatres, as well as on television.
His work evidences a strong interest in the relationship between images and sound, as well as avant-garde music from different parts of the world, and he frequently collaborates with musicians to produce new and radically divergent versions of soundtracks for his works. Echoing his approach to video and film-making, he choreographs every element of his exhibition installations with precision, looking to create an experience of the exhibition itself that is actively relational and intensely durational, resonating conceptually and rhythmically with the moving imagery.
About Ho Tzu Nyen: Ho Tzu Nyen’s first feature film, HERE, premiered at the 41st Director’s Fortnight, Cannes Film Festival (2009). He has exhibited widely, including in the Sao Paulo Biennale (2004), the Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale (2005), the Singapore Biennale (2006), and the Dojima River Biennale (2009). ZARATHUSTRA: A FILM FOR EVERYONE AND NO-ONE, a doom-metal adaptation and ‘compression’ of Nietzsche’s philosophical novel, was made in collaboration with film, music, fine arts, acting and musical theatre students from a Singaporean arts college, for the Asia-Pacific Triennial (2009) in Queensland, Australia.
Presented in association with Sydney Festival 2011.