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Model B: Orchid Mantis, taking its name from a species of pink and white mantis found particularly in Southeast Asia. The orchid mantis, as its name suggests, is a unique insect that is often mistaken for a flower due to its strong resemblance. It is this unique disposition, to be able to almost jump and shapeshift between states or forms (of an insect and a flower), or to even exist as a hybrid of both at the same time, that was important for the artist. Brandon’s orchid mantis however, is a much lossier version of a plant-as-animal/animal-as-plant thing. A proto-animal or proto-plant, in becoming animal, if you will.
Full text by Rafi Abdullah

BRANDON TAY (b. 1981, Singapore) is a Singaporean artist whose work explores emergent complexities in digital materials. Starting out as a prominent figure in Singapore's underground audio-visual scene, he has more recently expanded his practice into one that engages with varying permutations of projection mapping, digital, computer-generated imagery (CGI), time-based and new media, game environment art.In his practice, he complicates distinctions between the tangible and incorporeal, both in composition and well as subject matter, often looking into thematics surrounding the relationships between history and futurity, digital materiality, and contemporary philosophies. Brandon views digital materials as irreducible components that combine dynamically to create a more complex whole. Working with diverse components, whether fragments of 3D geometry, prompt tokens or 3D avatars of human beings, he combines these with out-of-context factors — such as doom-scrolling induced trance states, automatic writing, game physics and the likes — to simulate something that feels larger than its parts in unpredictable ways. As a collaborator and individually, his work has been shown at Art Dubai, tanzhaus nrw Düsseldorf, Kyoto Dance Experiment, Singapore International Festival of the Arts and M1 Fringe Festival Singapore.