Gajah Gallery presents And yet, if only, artist Kayleigh Goh’s (b. 1993) solo exhibition debut. Goh expands on a burgeoning visual practice begun in LASALLE College of the Arts, from which the artist graduated in 2016. Her works are rooted in the all-too-familiar disaffection of construction materials appropriated from the realm of functionality to create serene, balanced spaces of contemplation.
Whilst the typical architectural experience requires its viewer to be entirely enveloped in its art, Goh’s two-dimensional architectural transcriptions discount physicality from the experience. These illusory spaces cannot and will not have or hold any actual thing. As such, the planarity of Goh’s works prioritizes the metaphysical; in the artist’s own words, they act as portals for escape – escape from the cacophony of life, escape from the corporeal and into the mind.
The series’ ultimate genesis was a yearning for pause, with and through the meditative process of creation. The works are cold but warm, austere and luxurious all at once, tension that results in illusions grounded in reality but impossible for the real world. Completion of a final work was intuited by a sense of stasis in both product and process. And yet, if only, recalls lost possibilities at a day’s end, thoughts only ever divulged in moments of intimacy. For the privilege of such vulnerability, the works are naked first – raw, textured concrete and exposed wood lay bare the illusion of space. Pretence is shed in favour of a listening ear, one the viewer will always find in Goh’s work.
Since completing her BA (Hons) in Fine Art, Goh has participated in the Noise Art Mentorship, as well as an artist residency in Studio Kura in Itoshima, Japan. The month-long residency culminated in a selection of works titled Days Being in a Soft Lullaby. With Gajah Gallery, Goh was featured in The New Now and most recently, Power, Play and Perception.
