CNTRFLD.ART’S conversation with Wyn-Lyn Tan, a distinguished contemporary artist from Singapore, delves into her unique artistic practice grounded in both Eastern and Western painting traditions. Trained in traditional Chinese ink and Western painting, Tan's work embodies a contemporary visual language that explores the interplay between nature and abstraction. Inspired by her extensive travels to the Northern Hemisphere, her paintings capture the ephemeral beauty of distant landscapes and the metaphysical nature of space. With a rich career marked by prestigious awards and international residencies, Tan’s abstract compositions are celebrated for their rhythmic intuition and transformative quality, resonating deeply with the philosophies of qi and the essence of absence as presence.

CNTRFLD. Can you share some insights about your childhood in Singapore and how it has influenced your artistic journey and your work today?

WT. I was quite a solitary kid, and growing up, I was happiest in my own company drawing, painting, doodling or making something with my hands. Family outings were often spent at the beach or parks, and I remember my eight-year-old self, sprawled on the sand trying to capture the fading sunset with my crayons on paper. Looking back, this captivation with light has been a lifelong pursuit, influencing my exploration of themes relating to ephemerality and transience. I never consciously thought I was going to become an artist though. For my generation, being an artist was deemed only as something you did on the side, and not considered a ‘real’ job. I did the whole “get-a-proper-degree” route (I have a business degree) and worked in lifestyle publishing as a writer after graduation. But one day, I realized it was now or never. Making art has aways defined my existence in a way of knowing “this is who I am.” I knew then that I wanted to make a life of creating art, and to pursue it seriously as a profession. 

I don’t come from a privileged family, and to decide to make art a career was a path I had to sustain on my own. I put myself through art school while working at various part-time jobs, from freelance writing to bartending. Having committed to what was considered an unorthodox vocation choice, especially in Singapore with its pragmatic views to careers, I was determined to make it work. It was a very long journey, and not without struggles, but I am glad I have stayed the course and have now built a career as a full-time artist. 

CNTRFLD.ART. Your work often straddles between traditional Chinese ink painting and Western painting. How do you navigate and integrate these two distinct cultural influences in your art?

WT. I received a relatively traditional schooling at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) in early 2000, where I was trained in techniques of Chinese ink painting and the Nanyang style of painting. My teachers included China-born artists who had studied in Paris and were largely Impressionist inspired. Subsequently, one of my earliest artist residencies was in a small town in southern Finland, where I arrived during winter. It was my first time in this part of the world, yet I felt an immediate connection to the vast, monochromatic landscapes I encountered on my walks through the forest. I am not a spiritual person, but the emptiness opened up what felt like a spiritual resonance to me. The Qing dynasty artist Tang Dai once said, "if you want to achieve the highest levels of the art of painting, whether those of the "spiritual" or of the "free and easy" there is nothing to compare with having taken long walks and contemplated a great deal. All these "mental images" serving as material will have become concentrate and purified in your mind."

This experience proved to be a pivotal period for me. It led me to combine my training in Chinese painting together with the influence of both European painting and the direct impact of a Northern European landscape. In turn, shaping the direction of my ‘lighter’ visual language that continues till today. It also became the start of my fascination with light in the northern latitudes, and the impetus to travel even further north, all the way above the Arctic Circle.

CNTRFLD.ART. You describe your painting process as being driven by rhythm and intuition. Can you elaborate on how these elements come into play during your creative process?

WT. To me, painting is like a dance. I paint with the canvas or substrate placed flat on the floor, which allows me to move freely around it in all directions. I work instinctively, without a preconceived sketch, relying on movement and rhythm to guide my gestural mark making. For me, the intuitive language of gesture comes about when I no longer have to think about what I am painting when I paint. Some days, the tempo is ‘off’, and I feel like I’m dancing with two left feet, and other days it’s a beautiful tango, or rave, in my case, as my studio playlist includes mostly trance, house, ambient trance, electro, techno music. (And yes, I love dancing and clubbing.) That physicality is also why I tend to work big.

I build my abstract paintings in additive and subtractive layers, as I pour, dab, smear, wash over, and erase. The duration of pauses between wet and dry brushstrokes plays a determining factor in my work, as I engage this momentum to manoeuvre the effects of paint and capitalise on chance effects. There is also the rhythmic alteration of moving between states of absence and presence, of applying form and erasing. The energy of a painting might change over the course of time, evolving into something quite different at the end from when it first started. 

CNTRFLD.ART. You consider the journey and the immersive experience of a place as a medium. How have your travels, particularly to the Northern Hemisphere, shaped your artistic practice?

WT. Landscape is not simply what we see but also a way of seeing. I believe a strong bond with particular places, can in turn, provide vital connections to nature and cultures not my own. This degree of multiplicity is something I identify with. I grew up in Singapore, a young, cosmopolitan city-state with incredibly diverse cultures, spanning from Asian roots to a Western outlook. My own family is duo cultural. My ancestors came from China to Singapore, and married the local Malay women, and I belong to a subculture known as Peranakans. As a result of my multicultural upbringing, my identity as an artist is equally nomadic. I would like to think that placing myself in the vast diaspora gave me the ability to see potential in the most mundane things and has also been my way of probing and discovering new insights, observations or methods of artmaking. 

In 2011, I was awarded The Arctic Circle Residency. Together with a group of international artists and scientists, we sailed the waters of Svalbard, an Arctic Archipelago just 10 degrees latitude from the North Pole, stopping along the way to respond to the landscape in various ways. I had originally intended to paint with acrylic on canvas en plein air. But my water-based paints froze and turned to slush in the sub-zero temperatures. Duh! I then pivoted to thinking how I could continue to paint while harnessing the inherent elements of the frozen terrains. As I poured water collected from the Arctic Ocean (think: ink) onto snow (think: canvas), the melted snow froze and refroze almost immediately in the Arctic conditions, creating unique abstract paintings morphing in real time. This transition of time was captured on video in a series titled Snowscapes and marked my foray into using film as a medium. During this residency, I also made another video work Adrift that was subsequently exhibited at the Singapore Art Museum in the exhibition Odyssey: Navigating Nameless Seas. Adrift is a time-lapse video I recorded throughout my 16-day journey around the Arctic Circle. Shot from the porthole of my cabin, it offered at once an intimate yet distant encounter with this most northerly circle of the Earth’s latitude. 

Further travels to Iceland and living in Tromsø, a city in Northern Norway 350km above the Arctic Circle (where I received my MA at the Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art), continued to shape my artistic practice. Being out in these vast Northern landscapes, I experienced both the beauty and power of the elements and felt part of something larger than myself. It was a reminder of our inherent connection to nature, no matter the distance or destination. 

CNTRFLD.ART. As a woman contemporary artist, what unique challenges and opportunities have you encountered in the art world, and how have they impacted your work?

WT. This is a tricky question as I don’t see why artists should be labelled by their gender, especially if it reinforces typical gender stereotypes. A work of art should be looked at as an expression of the individual, devoid of the artist’s gender. 

CNTRFLD.ART. What are your views on the influence and significance of Asian contemporary arts in the global art scene, and how do you see your work contributing to this narrative?

WT. One of my biggest influences in art school was Chinese French painter Zao Wou-Ki, whose synthesis between Eastern and Western cultures blurred the boundaries between traditions. This shaped my understanding that art lives off convergences and divergences of cultures and need not be limited by set labels.

Asia is so diverse, yet intricately interconnected through shared histories and cultures. Despite being born and raised in Asia, I feel there is still much to discover and explore. It takes time, and patience is key in this journey. The global art market currently spotlights only a fraction of Asia’s vibrant artistic landscape, much of which is viewed through a western contemporary art lens. Academia on the subject continues to develop, and there is ample room for growth at the moment. But it is heartening to see an increasing focus on Asian art, exemplified by platforms such as Art Basel's presence in Hong Kong, where I held a solo presentation with FOST Gallery in 2017. 

CNTRFLD.ART. Your paintings often hover between nature and abstraction, with influences from traditional shanshui hua (山 水画) landscape paintings. How do you balance these elements to create your unique visual language?

WT. Nature serves as a launch pad, and my creative process includes being in and connecting directly to the landscape. It is from these intimate perspectives where I continually seek a connection with the world around me. I’ve always been interested in how nature works, and I also draw inspiration from reading on ecology, physics and philosophy. But when I’m back in the studio, it is an unconscious act in the making where the painting takes over. My paintings build on the notion of ‘absence as presence,’ where the continuous act of erasure reveals ghost traces and residues. Employing principles of Chinese painting, they play with the ambiguity of form, oscillating between representation and abstraction, exploring space and a viewer’s perception of it. 

In the (In)visible Horizons and The Blue of Distance Scroll works, a series of horizontal paintings of various lengths but similar height, alluded to traditional Chinese scroll paintings. The long vista hung in a seemingly endless row within a narrow corridor and around the gallery. You never see the entire work all at once. In a traditional Chinese scroll, the viewer can only discover one small section of the larger picture at a time. Here, a similar intimate experience is evoked as one makes a personal journey along the corridor in order to unfold the entire panorama of these scroll paintings, 16 of which were acquired by the Singapore Art Museum into their permanent collection. 

CNTRFLD.ART. You’ve experimented with unconventional mediums like patina, soil, and even artificial intelligence. What drives your curiosity in material energy, and how do these materials influence the outcome of your work?

WT. Observing nature requires a kind of parallel concentration that is unusual in a world today, where there are too many distractions to notice the endless complexity of light, colour, patterns in the natural world. My interest in material energy stems from a desire to bring to light the seemingly invisible nuances of the natural world.

The patina paintings came about as I started to notice the copper pipes in our bathroom developing a painterly patina. (Nothing like sitting on the throne for inspiration.) It got me thinking how I could harness the high humidity in Singapore as a medium, and give form to the hot, sticky air we don’t see yet feel so strongly. When I work with a new material, I take time to understand its intrinsic qualities, seeing it more as a collaborator than simply a medium. Particulate is a series of patina on copper paintings. I ‘paint’ scenes of shanshui (mountain and water) via alchemical reactions between the air and oxidising solutions applied to copper sheets. Both serendipity and artistic intervention steer the works, allowing for the invisible energy of metal, moisture in the air, and time to react and become interwoven as means of ‘painting.’ Borrowing from tenets of traditional shanshui painting, the work subscribes to nature’s rhythms and the co-existence between man and nature. And just as how shanshui paintings imagine ethereal landscapes out of the realm of nothingness, these works tease out that liminal space between what is there and what is perceived. 

My generative AI (Artificial Intelligence) video works are created by working with machine learning technology to train on images of my own physical paintings from the last decade. With AI as a collaborator, my expressions of nature are hybridized with that of the machine’s in new and unexpected ways. In this symbiotic loop of discovery, the shape-shifting abstract landscapes of my generative AI videos offer a glimpse into the ever-changing dynamics of our environment, questioning what is natural and synthetic. 

I’ve used soil as a medium to reflect on the impermanence of nature in urban spaces. Mapping Temporalities is a large-scale mud painting on the gallery’s glass façade. I created the mud mixture with water and soil sourced from a nearby construction area that was being bulldozed to make way for urban transformations. These paintings were washed away when the exhibition ended, mirroring the transient nature of Singapore’s landscapes. 

CNTRFLD.ART. What advice would you give to young artists who are passionate about pursuing their career in the arts, especially those who wish to explore the intersection of different cultural and artistic traditions?

WT. Years ago, I wrote on my studio wall: “Trust the process.” I have looked to that line for comfort and encouragement all this time - be it on days when I’m frustrated that a painting is just not working out, or when I wonder if an experiment, I’m exploring makes any sense, or if my career is going anywhere. To aspiring artists, if this is the path you choose, you need to have a dogged belief in what you are doing, and to be prepared for a very long and bumpy ride. In the meanwhile, be curious, open yourself to new possibilities and experiences, stretch yourself out of your comfort zone, have a go at unfamiliar things, and trust that you will discover your own path. For me, it also helped tremendously to have people who believe in what I am doing, and these include my husband and gallerist of FOST Gallery who has been representing me since 2009.

CNTRFLD.ART. Can you tell us about any upcoming projects or exhibitions you are excited about, and what new directions or themes you plan to explore in your future work?

WT. I’m currently working on a couple of large-scale commissions. One is a public artwork commissioned by the Land Transport Authority of Singapore under its Art in Transit (AIT) programme and is Singapore's largest public art showcase. I will be creating a stretch of glass paintings integrated into the architecture of a new subway station slated to open in 2027. Another is a new media installation commissioned by the National Gallery Singapore for the Children's Biennale 2025. I have also been selected to participate in TERRA, a site-specific exhibition across historic spaces in the heart of the UNESCO World Heritage vineyards in Burgundy, France this autumn. Looking ahead, I plan to explore more exhibitions on the international platform.  

I continue to be fascinated with ideas around time, light, the microcosm and macrocosm.  I have a rock collection that spans over a decade and across geological landscapes, from the Northern Hemisphere to the tropics. These symbols of geological time act as an exploratory medium for my continued inquiry into the nature of landscape. I’m working on new work for my next solo, of which is a series where I’ve borrowed and rescaled these fragments from a larger geology, to create mountainous forms shaped out of wood then painted layer over layer, like topographies of memories. In articulating landscape through the tension between proximity and infinity, the micro becomes the macro, holding space for one’s imagination. 

About Wyn-Lyn

Wyn-Lyn Tan is a visual artist currently living and working in Singapore. She received her MFA with Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art at UiT the Arctic University of Norway. She is the recipient of the Kunstnerstipend scholarship and Statens utstillingsstipend grant (2017), Norway, and has been awarded artist residencies with Cité Internationale des Arts artist-in-residence, Paris, France (2024), The Arctic Circle Residency (2011), Vermont Studio Center, Vermont, USA (2008) and Fiskars Village, Finland (2007). She has exhibited widely both locally and internationally. Selected solo presentations include at Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, Singapore (2023), Østfold Kunstsenter, Norway (2018), Art Basel Hong Kong (2017), and Inside-Out Art Museum, Beijing (2014). She has been featured in international group exhibitions in New York, Norway, Finland, Iceland, and China. Her works can be found in the permanent collection of the Singapore Art Museum, as well as numerous other public and private collections. Upcoming commissions include a public artwork painting installation commissioned by the Land Transport Authority of Singapore, and a new media installation commissioned by the National Gallery Singapore for the Children's Biennale 2025. She is represented by FOST Gallery (Singapore) and Sapar Contemporary (New York).   

CREDITS:

Illustration of Wyn-Lyn Tan by Maria Chen

All Artwork © Wyn-Lyn Tan

Surrogate, 2023, acrylic and resin on wood, 135 x 97 x 4 cm

(In)visible Horizons VI, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 54 x 200 cm

 (In)visible Horizons series, 2017, acrylic on canvas, installation view

 Artist Wyn-Lyn Tan in her studio

Adrift, 2016, single-channel video, sound, exhibition view, Odyssey: Navigating Nameless Seas, Singapore Art Museum.

I See Mountains VII and VI, 2018, acrylic and resin on tropical wood, 16.5 x 19.5 x 2.5 cm and 12.5 x 20 x 3 cm

Land-scape: Riau/ Light, 2023, generative AI video projections on wood, dimensions variable

Mapping Temporalities, 2022, mud on glass, exhibition view, Peripheral Spaces, NIE Art Gallery, Singapore

Nuance Vert, 2018, acrylic on canvas, 170 x 140 cm

Opalescence series, 2021, exhibition view, A Matter of Time, FOST Gallery, Singapore

Particulate: A World Without End, 2024, patina on copper, installation view

The Blue of Distance, 2015, acrylic on wood, exhibition view, The Blue of Distance, FOST Gallery, Singapore