Born in Singapore in 1967, Ian Woo, a graduate of Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Singapore and the Kent Institute of Art and Design, UK, was awarded a Doctor in Fine Art from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia in 2006. Lecturing at Lasalle College of the Arts since the 1990s, Woo was a recipient of the UOB Painting of the Year in the abstract category in 1999, and the jurors’ choice for two consecutive years in Southeast Asia’s Philip Morris Award in 1999 and 2000. His interdisciplinary practice includes art curating as well as making improvisational music. He is a keen participator of local noise festivals where he performs and records in two scatter rock outfits.Woo’s paintings are often ambiguous and abstract, evoking a sense of spontaneity and immediacy. In ‘Fire at Gigabyte Mountain’, he examines the dynamics of representation by combining geometric forms with ‘accidental’ drips, rubbings and slashes of paint, where the painted subject seems to be on the verge of a physical transience or a state of flux. Portraying a paradoxical methodology in between the multiple layers of varied yet opposing gestures, the whimsical nature of this work is apparent despite the contrast of the muted palette.
