Yeo Workshop is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Brandon Tay, a Singaporean artist whose practice is concerned with the emergent complexities related to digital materials. Primarily working through digital media, mediated sculptures, and the moving image, Tay’s works often complicate the distinctions between the tangible and the incorporeal, whilst addressing and contending with the relationality of their complex natures.
Curated by digital curator Rafi Abdullah, Form & Agency marks Brandon Tay’s inaugural solo exhibition. It introduces a fresh body of work that delves into the material nature of the digital realm. The exhibition features five 3D-printed sculptures and an immersive gallery environment that offers live simulations from virtual ecosystems, which can also be accessed online. The exhibition operates on three levels: the physical sculptures in the gallery, the virtual components of the artworks, and an interactive game simulation. These layers operate both independently and in connection with one another.
Central to the exhibition are five dynamic "agents" embodied in 3D-printed sculptures, each embedded with screens, sensors, and networking capabilities. These sculptures symbolise various forms of intelligence, such as adversarial neural networks, natural systems, blackboxing, cybernetic decision trees, and reinforcement learning. Together, they transform the gallery into an interactive space where visitors can observe the behaviours and evolution of a dynamic environment populated by chimeric hybrid lifeforms, all realised through game-engine technology.
Accompanying the sculptures is a real-time livestream projection that depicts a digital environment where these agents exist as conceptual entities within a memetic ecosystem. This projection provides context for the agents in their simulated habitat. The exhibition as a whole treats the sculptures as gateways into the internal world of potential non-human entities, hinting at alternate dynamic systems and novel ways of comprehending intelligence.
Operating in conjunction with the exhibition proper, a collaborative wikipedia has been constructed and can be accessed publicly, expanding on the worlds in which these anomalous objects have arrived from, open to the public as a portal to co-create and manifest the potentialities of unresolved futures.
https://form-and-agency.fandom.com/wiki/FORM_AND_AGENCY_Wiki
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Rafi Abdullah started his early training as an art professional at esteemed institutions such as the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) Singapore and The Private Museum. As a curator, he was selected to participate in workshops such as Staging and the Exhibition (2018) hosted by the Department of Visual Culture, Goldsmiths University of London; as well as the Workshops for Emerging Arts Professionals (2020) hosted by Para Site, Hong Kong. He has written for several artist catalogues and books, as well as for/in journals, platforms, and institutions such as Yavuz Gallery, Sullivan+Strumpf, National Gallery Singapore, and So Far. Most recently he curated the first digital billboard exhibition in Singapore, Crossroads (2022) and is currently a curatorial lead at The Upside Space.* denotes required fields
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