Image size: 48.5 x 44.5 cm
A graduate of Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Lee Teck Suan (b. 1958, and also known as Li Dezhuang) cuts a striking figure in the local art scene in the early 1980s. He won the Best Chinese Painting Award of the UOB Painting of the Year in 1984, with an unconventional and mixed-media ink work titled “Water Margin”, which later developed into a major series representing his early experimentation with the traditional ink medium. Since the 1980s, Lee as exhibited extensively around the world, including major solo and group shows in New York, Hong Kong, Taipei and Beijing. His early art teachers include Yang Hwee Bin and Tan Teo Kwang. His experimental employment of ink is hugely influenced by American Abstract Expressionism as well as Chinese masters such as Lin Fengmian and Zao Wou-ki. Until today, the artist maintains this artistic direction of exploring the abstraction with unorthodox approach to the traditional medium. The work depicts Chinatown in Singapore, a popular subject for painters in Singapore for its busy atmosphere and relationship to nostalgia and a sense of community. In his rendition of the ubiquitous streetside stalls and shophouses that easily situate the scene, Lee condenses different topographical elements into the tight, square format of the paper. The silhouettes of people milling through the streets are rendered in light, quick strokes. Upon the shop awnings that provide the pedestrians shelter, Lee stacks the tiled roofs and verticality of buildings in the background with a heavy ink wash that is accented by the economical yet efficient deployment of lines to denote windows and a loose sense of structural depth.
