A return to the artist’s hand and subjectivity in ‘Recent Paintings’
By Ian Tee

Midpoint is a monthly series that invites established Southeast Asian contemporary artists to take stock of their career thus far, reflect upon generational shifts and consider the advantages and challenges of working in the present day. It is part of A&M Dialogues and builds upon the popular Fresh Faces series.

Jeremy Sharma. Image courtesy of the artist and Singapore Art Museum.

Jeremy Sharma (b. 1977, Singapore) is an artist working with painting, writing and moving images. While he is best known for his conceptual approaches to painting, Jeremy has also delved into sound and installation works which investigate our relationship with interconnectivity in the information age. He has presented 20 solo exhibitions in Singapore, Sydney, Berlin and Switzerland. In addition to his artistic practice, Jeremy teaches at LASALLE College of the Arts Singapore, and runs bulanujung, an experimental curatorial platform.

Jeremy Sharma, ‘Recent Paintings’, 2023, exhibition view at Haridas Contemporary. Image courtesy of Haridas Contemporary.

I would like to start by talking about your solo exhibition ‘Recent Paintings’ (2023) at Haridas Contemporary. It features 15 new oil on canvas works which mark a return to painting for you after a decade of working in other modes. These new paintings rely on photographic sources, even though the eventual painting may not be faithful to the reference. What are the qualities you look out for in those original images?

It is ridiculously simple, because at the time, I had no expectations of doing a show. I just wanted to get back to painting during the COVID period. The first qualities I looked for was a degree of “flatness” of the image that had something to do with resolution and cropping. There is also closing-up, like a camera zooming in on an object. The second quality was that it was “paintable” with my skills. And thirdly, it was about affect, or how the image desires to be painted.

I would like to pick up on the notion of flatness you mentioned. In this body of work, you have employed formal strategies such as maintaining a consistent format, regardless of the scale of the original images, as well as using a grid in the underpainting. The grid is left visible in certain works such as ‘Reindeer’ (2023) and ‘Jumper’ (2023), providing a glimpse to your painting process. When multiple paintings are exhibited together, there is also a flatness of hierarchy where iconic images are seen alongside everyday snapshots.

What sustains your interest in this idea of flatness?

You are absolutely right to point this out. It has something to do with same-ness and “monochromy”. If you look past the image and its representation, they are just paintings defined and unified by the same format, palette and structure. I am fascinated by the ideas of difference and repetition. I leave the grid as it is, and make no attempt to hide the painting’s construction. How much of the grid is visible depends on the amount of time I invest in the painting.

Recently while painting, I observed that the grid not only produces a mapping, and therefore flattening which expands or contracts certain parts of the image. It also introduces a delay and doubling as the hand attempts to reproduce what the eye sees, so it is not an immediate tracing or projection. The hand is not faithful, at least not for me. My own theory is that the grid breaks the image up into a “discretisation” of seeing, especially in the later paintings.

In Sherman Sam’s review of ‘Recent Paintings’ on Art Forum, he described your beginnings as “a young expressionist, painting with, of all things, shoe polish, and later garnered acclaim for his smooth-grey monochromes.” The period referenced was the 2000s when you had your first solo exhibitions at The Substation as well as Art Forum Gallery in Singapore. How would you describe the local art scene at that time as well as your relationship with those two spaces?

I wish to also add that the grey monochromes would refer to the body of paintings I produced during the period after 2011, and that was exhibited in my solo exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, Grey Projects and then with Michael Janssen Gallery.

In response to your question about the art scene and my relationships with Art Forum Gallery and The Substation, they represent two models for me as an artist then: a commercial gallery and an independent art space. Marjorie Chu, who runs Art Forum, supported me in my earlier years by either buying the works from my studio or giving me an advance to make works. That period was marked by my shoe-polish works, followed by the ‘Sea-slab’ works and then the ‘Variations’ series, which marked my foray into making monochromes. I understood what it was like to make a body of works for an exhibition, and I also understood the dealings between a gallery and artist.

Even before working with Marjorie, The Substation, was a beacon of alternative and indie music and theatre. It also had a lovely visual arts gallery that showed important and experimental art exhibitions. I straddled both models and was heavily involved not just as a painter, but also as a musician and artist with my bands, Jade Adversaries, Suburban Dammit, Tiramisu, and art collective Kill Your Television. I think I had about three solos at the Substation gallery and what I learnt from having to do everything independently is priceless.

Those were the years when my peers and I were lean and hungry. I had countless conversations with artists, not at organised talks but at alleys of Armenian street and the old S-11 coffee shop near the former National Library. This was before big international art fairs and Gillman Barracks entered the Singapore art scene. It was lively and more vernacular.

Jeremy Sharma, ‘Terra Sensa’, 2013, series of computer numerical control (CNC) milled high density foam. Installation view at Singapore Art Museum, presented as part of ‘Singapore Biennale 2013: If the World Changed’. Photo by Fareez Ahmad.

Looking back, could you share a decision or event that marked a significant turn/moment in your path as an artist?

It was the Singapore Art Biennale in 2013 where I produced my foam works 'Terra Sensa’. This marked the period that I moved away from painting. I was struggling with the proposal for the project and also with its fabrication. However, the works brought a lot of attention to my practice from international galleries and new collectors. Among them include my solo exhibitions in Berlin and Switzerland, as well as art fair participation in Europe. It also made me more ambitious for high-cost production works. This period lasted for a few years, and while I was teaching, but I was burnt out at the end of it all, as they took a toll on my expenses and personal life. I learnt a lot, good and bad, dealing with people who tried to represent my practice. By the same token, I also decided to stop making such works and re-attuned my practice.

Jeremy Sharma, ‘Variations’, 2011, exhibition view at Art Forum, Singapore. Image courtesy of the artist.

Jeremy Sharma, ‘Exposition’, 2013, exhibition view at Grey Projects, Singapore. Photo by Fareez Ahmad.

In a video produced by Art Forum on the occasion of ‘Jeremy Sharma: First Seven Years’ (2017), you mentioned how you did not “want to work with an image, or gesture, or anything that is expressive” when speaking about your shift to making monochrome paintings in the early 2010s. Yet I think that there is a sense of sentimentality, even in your grey paintings which were made by pouring enamel paint onto smooth aluminium panels. They are monochrome paintings, but the grey tones are still mixed by hand. What are your thoughts about this?

If you mean sentimentality as an artist’s subjectivity and touch, yes, I cannot escape that! I also struggle and straddle between the object and the subject of a work. And this speaks to all those restless years of experimenting and questioning what a painting is, or even what art is, if there is no image, gesture or expression. Isn’t that enough? In some ways ‘Recent Paintings’ is about the return of the artist’s hand or touch. In another way, it is also a return to problems of subjectivity and representation.

“ In some ways ‘Recent Paintings’ is about the return of the artist’s hand or touch. In another way, it is also a return to problems of subjectivity and representation.”

You have also been teaching at LASALLE College of the Arts for more than a decade. How do you think it has impacted your work? And how do you manage your time and head space between teaching and your artistic practice?

LASALLE made a huge impact on my work. My education has shaped the way I think about and make art, but coming back as a lecturer, I have also contributed to the cycle and environment with the next generation of artists. One example is the attention to studio practice, where making takes as much weight as ideas, theories and concepts. I think the McNally School of Fine Arts is diverse enough to allow for differences and dialogue with all kinds of practices. This feeds back into the community when students become artists and foster their own networks.

As to your second question, to be honest, I do not manage it very well, but it has gotten better with time and experience. The South Korean philosopher Byung Chul Han said “there is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life”. This equilibrium or lack of it could also be used to describe the teaching-artistic practice relationship. Sometimes, certain things have got to give. Discipline helps with management. Taking time out of art is also very important.

Paintings and scribbles on Jeremy’s studio wall. Image courtesy of the artist.

Storage and working spaces in Jeremy’s studio. Image courtesy of the artist.

Could you describe your studio/ workspace? How has it evolved over the years? What do you enjoy about it, and what do you wish to improve?

Organised mess or clutter. It is part storage, part studio now. It has shape-shifted various times to cater to my changing practice. When I started out, I had a lot of floor space which I worked from, and no shelves and furniture. I hardly used the wall. I poured industrial paint and wax and made collages and worked horizontally. You will find all kinds of stains on my floor now as remnants of the past. My walls have all kinds of scribbles from having to get my thoughts down fast.

At one point, it looked like a jamming studio, with sound-proof panels and music instruments and speakers, because I was making music and focusing on sound installations. These days, I am cataloguing my old works from the shelves and working on my paintings from the walls.

What do I wish to improve? Hopefully air-conditioning.

What has become easier or more difficult to do as time has gone by?

It is always difficult! New challenges emerge all the time but I probably would not have it any other way. Maybe if anything has gotten easier, it is dealing with difficulty. Isn’t that a paradox? Now, I have a whole history of working and exhibiting, an accretion of instincts, skills, experiences, networks and a heightened sense for space and things. Finances are easier compared to when I was younger.

Cover design of ‘Slander!’, published by Set Margins. Image courtesy of Billie Sng.

Jeremy Sharma, ‘Bumble (after VG)’, 2024, oil on linen, 63 x 87cm. Image courtesy of the artist.

Are there any upcoming exhibitions/ projects you wish to share?

Yes, I am releasing a creative non-fiction book called Slander! with Dutch publisher Set Margins real soon! It is about six films made in the heyday of Singapore’s filmmaking industry, just before independence in 1965. I am also developing a new suite of paintings for Haridas Contemporary next year, this time a little more thematic with a slight variation of sizes.

And finally, what would be a key piece of advice to young art practitioners? What has been a way of working, a certain kind of attitude etc. they can learn from to apply to their own careers?

Artists are a breed of people that goes against the grain. Artistic practice is not about returns, so it is anomalous to mainstream society which is a tad too materialistic and mechanistic. It is closer to a belief or faith system. Dare I say it’s a spiritual vocation? Maybe not, but making art is definitely good for the spirit! Artists crave one asset, which is time.

I am terrible at taking my own advice! I leave it to the laws of attrition; if you want it bad enough, you will be the only one staying up at 1am in the morning with your paintbrush trying to adjust a blue to a red. I wish to tell young practitioners to look for truth, and look for beauty, if they can find it, but I do not think I have ever said that in my life.

This interview is presented in partnership with Haridas Contemporary.

Access the full Midpoint series here.