KINETIC SHADOWS

Andrew Ooi, Untitled, 2011 | 35.5 x 35.5 x 1.75 inches, 90 x 90 x 4.5 cm | Mura Udaban Itaboshi, thread

Andrew Ooi, Untitled, 2011 | 35.5 x 35.5 x 1.75 inches, 90 x 90 x 4.5 cm | Mura Udaban Itaboshi, thread

My art has always been about three distinct elements: architecture, space and mood. These three elements have always been in service to one fundamental idea: perception. I do this in an effort to challenge the idea of art as object, and introduce art as a way of re-examining the way we see things, and in a broader sense, how we see and create our reality.

Andrew Ooi, Untitled, 2011 | 35.5 x 35.5 x 1.75 inches, 90 x 90 x 4.5 cm | Mura Udaban Itaboshi, thread

Andrew Ooi, Untitled, 2011 | 35.5 x 35.5 x 1.75 inches, 90 x 90 x 4.5 cm | Mura Udaban Itaboshi, thread

Three-dimensional works appear as two-dimensional constructs, and vice-versa. I “free fold” – an improvised folding technique based on a familiarity with Japanese joinery and polyhedron structures – different weights, sizes and natural-fiber papers to create the architecture, the physical structure, of my work. With many repetitive folds, a sense of infinitum is present, as well as the idea of an end and a beginning, without certainty. And objects in the round, require to be seen in the round, becoming a different piece, a different experience from each vantage point it’s viewed.

Andrew Ooi, Detail, 2011 | Gampi Udaban

Andrew Ooi, Detail, 2011 | Gampi Udaban

Andrew Ooi, Detail, 2011 | Gampi Udaban

But these are only some of the ways the play of perception exists in the work. Spatially, I remove the traditional landscape through which artworks are defined. There is no plane – no background, middle ground, and foreground – in my works. They behave truly, as a bird’s eye view. Like looking out an airplane window when in flight. Everything is “flat” or even, “one-dimensional.” Again, the same principle applies to objects in the round, which by nature are “plane-less:” It begs the question, if this isn’t object we’re looking at, or landscape in the traditional sense, what is it?

Andrew Ooi, Ripple, 2011 | 43 x 35 x 1.75 inches, 109 x 89 x 4.5 cm | Mura Udaban, thread

It’s about the manipulation of light and its affect on perception, so subtle, that the works don’t read as a kind of brightness, intensity or temperature, but rather as a kind of feeling – dreamy, solemn, peaceful – ways in which we typically don’t use to describe light and ways of seeing and yet are familiar as concepts of light and seeing all the same. These adjectives and concepts of light, speak to our experience of it. It is light that shapes our reality; shapes the way that reality is perceived and these works do more than represent light, but is of light itself.

Andrew Ooi, Untitled, 2010 | Gampi Udaban – ombre printed

My hope with my art is to bring those very feelings of perception that address our experiences of it and reality – by way of peaceful feeling and intent in the making of these works – back into consciousness. An awareness of consciousness so that its reality coexists along with the one currently occupied. Perhaps offering pause, and by doing so, establishing another reality in experiencing the artwork.

Andrew Ooi, Untitled, 2010 | Gampi Udaban