Is your happy place a physical space, or a mental frame within your mind? In WOAW Gallery’s latest exhibition at their Singapore space, nine international artists have been gathered to present work that explores intimate spaces within individual lives, ranging from the real to memory, the foreign to the imaginary. Running from 4th May to 1st June, the nine artists utilise a spectrum of stylistic and compositional approaches each to interpret the show’s title in their own way, and when presented in tandem, prompt new dialogue on the role of the artist’s psyche in contemporary painting.

The work of the Sweden-based artist Daniel Fleur (b. 1992, Democratic Republic of the Congo) centers around the pleasures and pressures of modern living, and hints at how matters of the heart can be interpreted extremely differently for different people and purposes at this point in contemporary society. Intimacy can at times be found in the most unexpected of places.

Korean artist Duri Baek (b. 1984, Korea) tells of the will to live through light and darkness, and explores the coexistence of elements with opposite qualities. Exploring the natural world, her work are often composed of minimal colours, and focus on the way light falls, dappled and fragmented.

The work of the British artist Elena Rivera-Montanes (b. 1998, Frimley, England) floats between past and present, commemorating moments and people in her life through belongings once owned and spaces once inhabited, evoking a sense of familiarity most can respond to.

Dutch artist Karel Dicker (b. 1989, Schimmert, Netherland)’s “drawn poems” feature no living figure, but remains – remains of moments lived and unlived, alone or in company. The expressionistic tableaus are bursting with wild longing to celebrate the better things in life, missing are the people trapped in the restricting society of their own creation, endlessly longing for freedom, love and celebration, and these new works explore receptacles and drinks, and incorporate the use of unique frames that only add to the splendour and energy.

Hong Kong-based Marian Ang (b. 1987, London, England) builds on her series “A Room of One’s Own”, named after the 1929 essay by the English writer Virginia Woolf, which takes inspiration from spaces that great women artists carved out for themselves, from Georgia O’Keefe to Chinese contemporary artist Cao Fei, reflecting the dichotomy between her domestic and working spheres.

Japanese artist Miho Ichise (b. 1969, Japan) celebrates the everyday with her practice, capturing quiet, fleeting moments that would otherwise be missed, with light playing a narrative role in its own right. Not only does she capture light and shadow vividly, she also finds beauty in the mundane, the broken and the domestic.

Exploring ideas of purity, femininity, Shintoism, and trauma; London-based artist Mizuki Nishiyama (b. 1998, Hong Kong) utilises the elements of the world to responds to what it means to be a woman today. Creating – a chaotic yet meditative process – allows her to make sense of the more tempestuous periods in life as well as merge interdisciplinary thoughts and mediums to visualise the contemporary experience.

Following a prolonged period of illness in her early adulthood, London-based painter Nina Silverberg (b. 1994, Rome, Italy)’s subjects frequently include timeless signifiers of human care and comfort – with silhouetted structures acting as architectural archetypes of the Mediterranean home, serving as protection. At once melancholic and reassuring, they suggest an inherent frailty and offer empowerment as coping mechanisms against our contemporary condition.

Finally, Korean artist Novo (b. 1982, Korea) pushes the boundaries of traditional still life painting by adopting different planar perspectives and altering observed colours and shapes of objects and interiors. This new form of figurative painting reflects the curiosities and pleasantries of daily life, from images of a model-esque cat, to a Blackberry displaying a call from mum.

Arranged in a single gallery, surrounding you on three walls, A Quiet Room, A Place In Your Heart asks visitors to confront and question what it means to feel at home, as long as you imagine a place in your head. Throughout all these works, what ties them together is their shared sense of yearning, for a place of quiet to contemplate, express, reflect, and celebrate the personal and the every day, the mundane and the dramatic alike, each telling a story of each artist’s places of comfort, and a place within all our hearts.

Images Courtesy of WOAW Gallery and the artists

A Quiet Room, A Place In Your Heart runs from 4th May to 1st June 2024 at WOAW Gallery Singapore. More information available here