Image size: 96.2 x 90.9 cm
Goh Beng Kwan is one of the earliest post-war artists in Singapore to travel to the United States to pursue an art education, where he studied at the Art Students League of New York. Today, Goh is recognised for his contributions in collage, particularly for his incorporation of a wide range of cultural materials and motifs used to explore issues around cultural representation, urbanism, and identity. Advertisements (c. 1962-66) is demonstrative of the style of abstract painting that Goh Beng Kwan developed during his student years in New York from 1962 to 1966, a significant moment when the artist abandoned naturalism altogether and became preoccupied with problems of form, brushstroke and colour. The built environment of New York inspired many of Goh’s paintings during this time. In Advertisements (1962-66), the flurry of intersecting horizontal and vertical lines across the picture plane, rendered in a moody palette of blacks and browns, reference the city’s grid pattern and the dominating presence of advertising.
