Starters Of The Day

They're created by names associated foremost with the world of conceptual art, but these objects can also be worn, sat on, used as a container or even as part of one's bath time ritual. Keng Yang Shuen reports on the blurring of lines between art and design, and the Singapore artists reshaping the principle of form follows function.

They look like slivers of half-used, candy-colored soap bars - vacuum-sealed in sets of six along with a printed zine that could pass off as the product pamphlet of the next big Gen Z beauty company. Stranger('s) Touch, reads the zine cover. Handmade soaps moulded into the shape of used soap bars.

It might all seem like a satirical artwork. Behind it is the emerging artist Daniel Chong who describes the kits - made available for sale online and displayed at the Arab Street branch of lifestyle-slash co-working space Crane in March - as an art project hiding under the guise of a beauty brand. The pop-up presentation was organised by Chong and freelance art director Pixie Tan to explore the sense of touch and its place in human relationships and the everyday, with other tactility intrigued artists on show.

Possibly esoteric stuff - except that said soap bits are new, clean and can be used. It's your call whether to treat them as art or incorporate them into your daily shower ritual. (The project) felt too commercial to be in a traditional art space yet too weird to be in Orchard Road, says Chong. My soaps could shine in the environment we had chosen due only to everyone understanding this in-between space that my work occupies.

Welcome to the nebulous world where art and industrial - or utility-backed - design (architecture, fashion, bath supplies, you name it) intersect and meld together, resulting in objects that don’t fit neatly into either category. The artist-turned maker movement has had a long if informal history. Cue the sculptor Isamu Noguchi, whose modernist furniture – borne mid-career out of a collaboration with Herman Miller in the ’40s – remains a grail for collectors. Ditto Donald Judd and his pared-back, geometric chairs, bed frames and tables, which can be said to be a continuation of his Minimalist art practice in a different medium.