OH CHAI HOO (B. 1960)

Born in 1960, Oh Chai Hoo spent his childhood in the pre-industrial Jurong Island, Singapore, away from the hustle and bustle of urbanity, and later graduated from Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in 1982. Reactivating the thousand-year-old art of stone appreciation with a contemporary form, his works were included in the permanent collection of the National Museum Art Gallery, Singapore. Oh grounds a complex mix of ink to create a special consistency that allows him to subsequently use newspaper to mould the patterns of the rock with meticulous details. The process ingeniously corresponds with the geological formation of rocks, which can be seen as the artist’s homage to nature.