Dream Weaver

Marking Singapore on the world stage of fine arts with his eclectic intepretation of dreams is Ruben Pang. He shares with Jessica Chan how his career led to a love affair with Italy.

 

 
Ruben Pang was introduced to the fine arts from a young age. He devoured his father’s collection of magazines on old masters, including Rembrandt and Caravaggio, as reference for his paintings, but it wasn’t till the age of 16 did he consider the life of an artist. The firstborn in a Chinese family, Pang felt the pressure to perform academically. His then principal of Catholic Junior College, however, simply told him to study the fine arts after seeing his series of Alexander McQueen-inspired fashion plates. After graduating with a Diploma in Fine Art from Lasalle College of the Arts in 2010, he was selected for the START International Artist Residency Program, where he spent months in Tel-Aviv-Yafo (Israel) surrounded by fellow passionate artists.

Pang’s works, of which he describes as “visual syncopations of his dreams”, have won him multiple awards – Sovereign Asia Art Prize Finalist in 2010 and 2012, and the Winston Oh Travelogue award, to name a few. He recently debuted of Halogen Lung, an idiosyncratic visualisation of inanimate objects at Primae Noctis, Lugano (Switzerland), as well as his signature triptych, La Meccanica delle Meraviglie, at MO.CA Centro per le nuove culture in Brescia (Italy).

You’ve mentioned that you draw inspirations from your dreams. How have you translated your vision into reality?

It’s hard to contain it into an elevator pitch but there are two parts in the simplest sense.