“Totem” is by a very young Singaporean artist named Chun Kai Feng, now having his first solo show at Fost Gallery in Singapore. His apparent riff on tribal art is in fact an homage to the classically brutalist benches that are a fixture of Singapore’s government housing, where something like 75 per cent of the population live. Stacking them high also evokes Brancusi’s “Endless Column” but there’s also a quiet reference to the Pop work of Richard Artschwager: The concrete of Chun Kai Feng’s benches is in fact just a kind of Formica. Which means that the brutalist concrete of housing estates is finally on its way to revival as a desirable decorative touch.
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