Bansky is coming to Hong Kong

Number-Trance-Face in Argentina

Number Trance Face

Saturday 29th March 2008
O. Fournier Galleries @ Mendoza, Argentina

A major exhibition of paintings by Rajinder Singh about the numerical equivalent of lovely

(12thFeb 2008) The management of O. Fournier Galleries, a premier art gallery in Mendoza Argentina is proud to present Number Trance Face, a long-planned and exciting new exhibition of paintings by international multicultural artist, Rajinder Singh. This is the first time that paintings of this successful and prolific Malaysian artist, who was recently selected as one of 20 emerging artists to represent Asia by a juried competition in Hong Kong, will be shown in Argentina. The grand opening of the exhibition will take place on Saturday the 29th of March at the O. Fournier Galleries at 12 noon. The President and founder of O. Fournier Mendoza, José Manuel Ortega Gil-Fournier will open the exhibition.

Artist Rajinder Singh’s FACES collection was launched in France in June 2007. The large format paintings of women in Rajinder’s life are painted using numbers that represent the numerical equivalent of beauty. “The exhibition will feature paintings of faces of women who have exerted a strong influence in my life. Wife, sister, actresses, radio jock, author etc..what is in their faces that make them such strong women? What is it that they share in the shape of their eyes, their lips, their noses? Each face is painted using only numbers and mathematical equations as I attempt to ask the question: what is the numerical equivalent of lovely?” says Singh.

“My art practice has always been based on the wonder of the abstract codification of pure thought we call mathematics. I am motivated by the aesthetics of elegant mathematics now in my art as I was as a mathematician in my past. On the other hand I nurture a sceptical viewpoint on the role mathematics play as the inevitable language of choice of science and its prevalence in our lives. My art practice lies within this dialectic – in the contradiction between my two conflicting viewpoints, adopted as the determining factor in their continuing interaction. In FACES, I confront this dialectic. I engage with my experience of the aesthetics in high level mathematics to paint faces of women that stand prominent in my visual history in the hope to question the ideas that correlate the two and the ramifications that might emanate from any tangible success in such an endeavour”, continues Singh.

Rajinder invites his audience to view his paintings through a sieve – a sieve made of mathematical objects that pack a substantial amount of information on the way we might view beauty. He invites viewers to engage not analytically, neither synthetically, but in a way that combines both modes and feel/intuit the correspondence in the aesthetics of the combined beauty of my mathematics and the underlying beauty of my faces.

But most of all he wants his audience to evaluate mathematics and its place in our lives. Is mathematics something necessary for life as “art” and not just “fact” and does its value lie in, as Polkinghorne said, as an “abstract key which turns the lock of the physical universe”, or is it the most self-flattering, self-aggrandizing trivia game ever invented?

Rajinder’s paintings are beautiful paintings of beautiful people about beauty, both physical and mathematical. And perhaps the mathematical equivalent of lovely might even act as the perfect sieve to reveal a new dimension to this supreme force of human experience affecting real and lasting transformation in us. Art and maths are but languages through which we attempt to understand that which is ineffable.

About the artist:
Rajinder’s extensive background in Mathematics is the driving force behind his successful art practice. He has been painting all his life. His work has seen considerable exposure worldwide. Rajinder was recently selected as one of 20 emerging artists to represent Asia by a juried competition in Hong Kong. He will be showing in London, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Korea, New York and Argentina in 2008. He lives and works in Singapore.

The nature of intellectual aesthetic experience

I am a painter with a background in mathematics. I paint what has come to be known as ‘math paintings’. It is one of those unfortunate terms that will dog me forever that say so little about my work. But I do paint with mathematics. I spend months developing complex mathematics related to the subject I choose to paint. I get passionately involved with mathematical definitions, theorems, proofs and numbers that I find exciting and beautiful and that describe a certain aspect of my chosen subject matter e.g. beauty if I am painting faces of women. Once I am done with the research, I use the resultant outpouring of mathematics to paint. I literally paint with mathematics. There is often very little on my canvas that is not painstakingly constructed using layered equations, numbers and symbols.

But why do I do this? I have spent years working with mathematics and I am familiar with the excitement that a good piece of mathematics can generate. There are some proofs and theorems and geometrical objects that I find exceptionally beautiful and I have often experienced a racing of pulse when I stumble upon a great mathematical solution. My reaction to my mathematics is often more intellectual than it is emotional. When I call my mathematics beautiful, I have an aesthetic experience which I choose to call an intellectual aesthetic experience (IAE). An intellectual aesthetic experience is intellectual and is elicited by the mind’s experience of an intellectual object. I paint to construct conduits to tap onto this experience. My paintings and everything that goes into making them are special purpose vessels of the IAE. Does that make any sense?

Why mathematics? Scientific theories can be beautiful. Engineering systems are often referred to as aesthetically pleasing. (Much of what you see in Biennales around the world today appeal chiefly to the IAE, in my opinion). Also, mathematics is not a spectator sport and too many people are turned off by it, thanks largely to our education systems.

To answer this question, I want to spend the rest of this article to talk about the special place that mathematics occupies beside aesthetic experience. First, consider the famous question - “…How are synthetic judgments apriori possible?” which begins Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Kant proposes that the objective validity of mathematical knowledge rests on the fact that it is based on the apriori forms of our sensibility which condition the possibility of experience. If we have apriori conditions to sensibility, then we have knowledge that is more than just logical. If we say, ‘It is either snowing or not snowing’ we have an analytic proposition. An analytic proposition is about logical relations and not empirical facts. Its truth rests on definition and logic alone. Empirical knowledge on the other hand is synthetic. It tells us more than mere logical relations. For the special case of apriori synthetic knowledge that is independent of experience, we can have knowledge (more than just logic) without experiencing it. Mathematics is this special case of synthetic apriori knowledge. Mathematics, according to Kant is based on the preconditions of experience itself. So, mathematics is closer to the way we experience than we might like to think.


But in the last 200 years, the above apriori synthetic/analytic boundary was challenged by the introduction of non-Euclidean geometry, as well as Turing’s halting and Godel’s incompleteness theorem. With non-Euclidean geometry for instance, apriori synthetic truth is revealed as simply a logical possibility. And if apriori synthetic truths condition the possibility of experience, experience itself becomes malleable. Once we learn the new preconditions, we are free to change the way we experience, altering its very definition. We see here the finitude of Reason, the central theme to Kant’s philosophy. Nature does not speak to Reason. The ‘other’ is mute. Reason is not the mirror reflecting the light of Nature. We know this because it is incompatible with the very essence of empirical science – that we cannot conduct experiments independent of context. The power of human Reason is not in its universality but in articulating its own boundaries against non-Reason. Mathematics is a special form of dialogue between Reason and the ‘other ‘( non-Reason) and Mathematics allows the ‘other’ to reveal its authoring otherness. Mathematics thus becomes a true counterpart to poetry in that both seek ways to transcend the radical finitude of Reason. Aesthetic experience therefore is a constitutive component of human rationality.


I have outlined (too briefly) how mathematics and aesthetic experience might be related. I hope to continue in part II with an in depth discussion on the nature of IAE.

The Aliya and Farouk Collection

I had my first ever solo exhibition in Malaysia on the 18th of April 2007. A preview of the paintings was held the day before, unannounced -for the select few revered nobles of the art world, the names of whom are mentioned in hushed reverence in galleries around Kuala Lumpur. It was a somber affair in a big airy gallery in the posher parts of Kuala Lumpur, the twin-tower capital city of Malaysia. I sat in my hotel away from the galley in tremulous prayer, not knowing what to expect.

I walked into my gallery the next day greeted by excited chatter. My stars had aligned. There were five paintings with red dots on them. I was overjoyed. And it was no less than Farouk Khan and his wife who had graced my soft opening with their presence and deigned to set their hearts on five of my larger pieces. The Khans are the most prominent collectors in town, as I came to find out. You cannot talk about the Malaysian art-world without referring to Farouk and Aliya who have, according to many accounts, singled-handedly, turned the fortunes of the Malaysian contemporary art scene around in the last few years.

How can two people have such an impact on a whole generation of artists in a country that rivals Indonesia for its output of great works of art? This was all new to me and I got interested. Farouk and Aliya invited me over to their plush home – a home which could put any gallery and any national art museum in South East Asia to shame. I wanted to be one of the first few to get a preview of Farouk’s much talked about but yet unpublished catalogue of his collection – a cool 600 pieces of the very best of Malaysian contemporary art – and to have a chat about The Khan’s stupendous influence in the Malaysian art world.

I am aware of what is going in Indonesia just now. Buying contemporary art is becoming fashionable. A similar sort of transition is taking place in Kuala Lumpur. The works of new contemporary artists all around Malaysia are gaining reputation and the prices are going up. No more are these artists scorned as they were for the past 10 years. No more is their art considered ‘unmarketable’. A quick review of the going ons in the galleries in Kuala Lumpur will highlight this trend. Whole exhibitions are selling out. Collectors are competing for the same few pieces of art long before exhibitions open.

This is very different from only a few years ago. There was a pressure from the Malaysian “old masters” and the curators and critics failed to recognize the changing face of Malaysian art. They hesitated for a long time to acknowledge the powerful phenomenon of contemporary art. Their position as mentors to public taste made them too cautions; their myopia made them cling for the unchanging and safe hold of the old. Farouk and Aliya lament this failed curatorial process as it inhibited the progress of art in the region. Says Farouk, “…. from the time we started collecting art, the emphasis in the Malaysian art scene amongst collectors was more on pioneer era art and heritage art. There was no movement out of this and, we, from the very beginning rejected the stereo type collecting. The more we got into it, the more we felt that that was the thing to do. Most interestingly was the fact that the contemporary art that was available was of the best art of the period. This was largely due to the fact that institution collections were trapped in the pioneer era and the curators of the day were for various reasons rejecting the contemporary art movement. As the institutions were not collecting, most of the corporate collectors who were very predominant in the Malaysian art scene were also therefore not able to follow the art movement and changes that were happening.”


It took the visionary outlook of the Khans to bring contemporary art in Malaysia to its full and true expression. “We actually felt a sense of deep commitment to ensure our collection became an important collection of the period. We became committed to the task of forming a contemporary collection of Malaysian art which was till then fairly non existent. It amazed us that such a great body of work was available for us to pick up at extremely affordable prices. We have always wondered if whether such an opportunity would have lent it self to us in any other country in the world.”

So what has caused this vacuum in the last ten years? Who has been tightening the noose around the life-energies of a whole era? “The state of art in Malaysia was in the doldrums. There were great artists doing great work but it was being unappreciated. We actually credit our collection to what we term the "failed curatorial process" in the country and in the region. Museum curators and art writers were more important than artists. They were obnoxious and arrogant and in our opinion lazy. In the 10 years of collecting Malaysian art it always amazed us that we never ran into the major curators of the day. It was clear to us that those who were spending their own money were in fact more diligent than those spending the public's money. I have never had any qualms about stating very openly that to a very large extent, the institutional collection of Malaysian art in Malaysia and in the region was not representative of the Malaysian art scene. It was a representation of the "failed curatorial process.”.”

I, for one, am glad for the changing landscape of tastes in Malaysia. I am indebted to The Khans especially for their commitment to the new and exciting art of my proud nation. I can understand what it must have been like for them, alone in their pursuits, hard-pressed perhaps at times in justifying their expensive purchases. It could have been but a fancy -an isolated manifestation of anomaly which might never have become a broad popular movement. Today they own the finest collection of Malaysian art anywhere. I am proud to be part of it.

Painting by Numbers - by Ken Feinstein

( See www.unprimed.com)

What is a digital image? If it is an image created by the manipulation of digits by a program, then Rajinder Singh’s portraits are digital art. The fact that he doesn’t use a computer is irrelevant. An issue for those who need to protect their fiefdom’s. What is happening is a very complex and dense use of numbers and mathematics. How do we use numbers? What does it say? What can it say? What can’t it say?

The theorist Vilem Flusser has written about how the text as image came to a crisis point in the early 20th century.1 The crisis was came about when the written word became incomprehensible. to make his point, he doesn’t go to Joyce or the Surrealists, but to Einstein. E=mc2, a simple statement that means more than it can contain. How do we understand this? e go back to visual images. Images based on concepts, mathematics and technology. What Flusser calls the “technical image”. An not an image of technique, but an image of technology. Singh’s images are images of both technique and technology. They pile numbers upon numbers, until images appear. The text passes through its own crisis of meaning, coming through the other side as pure image. A face, the face of a woman springs out of the numbers. the theoretical comes back to the human. How he got there remains unreadable, but we don’t care. We have arrived with him to a gaze that looks back at us as much as we look at it.

This gaze is made of numbers literally piled on top of each other. Mapping the face as we do a mountain. Singh asked where can we find the emotion in numbers. This is where it is, in the peaks and valleys of the face. The building up of layers of colour tagged to different number sets. These numbers sets could be stock quotes, flight schedules, scores from the Premier League, the seemly disconnected events, which make up our life. And we turn to the face to se the culmination of our life. We “read” a face for this. The cliche goes that the eyes are the windows of the soul, but the face is the map of experience.

Singh began this collection of faces by asking where is the “lovely” in mathematics. Einstein defined the best scientific and mathematical solutions as the simplest and most elegant. The most elegant is an aesthetic judgement. Here is the art in math. We understand, no we expect the aesthetic judgement in art. The aesthetic helps us define the form of the language of art. Like the rules for the construction of a sentence. Math being among other things the language of science. Yet Einstein is defining the scientific by the artistic. Wittgenstein proved that something can not be defined as a subset of itself. So we have to go elsewhere to define what makes the scientific. The amateur violinist Einstein knows that we have to go to an older system to legitimate the scientific system. If the aesthetic can be used to define science and math is its language than the lovely can be found there. Humming through with Pythagorus’ celestial harmonies. We should never forget that math and music are tied so tightly together that it can be hard to untangle them.

The lovely is not found in the numbers themselves, but in how the numbers are used. The place where the digits are used to create meaning. Many philosophers have agreed that meaning is created by the relationship, the give and take of the conversation. This conversation can be between people or a work of art and a viewer, a book and a reader or even a mathematician and an algorithm. The relational is the core of the artistic experience. It is a conversation each side enters into. Jean-Franзios Lyotard sees this as part of game theory2. Emmanuel Levinas finds G-d there3.

Here we are back to the gaze. the work looks at us knowing that we are looking at it. It is a gaze looking for its return. The return is the play of the game. We set the rules and we engage. It is Lyotard’s conversation. It is the relational. An inclusive act. An ethical act. An act which as draws on in to respond, to finish the conversation. Because with out the other of the viewer, it is just a monologue going out to nowhere. The work calls, we respond. It asks, we answer. We may ask of the work and demand an answer back, but we can not do this with out answering first.

Play, playfulness, things we forget to think about with art any more. As statements like this one are written and as theorists become critics, works are discussed very solemnly. Maybe too solemnly. Singh’s paintings are combining two things that are playful in nature algorithms and painting. Algorithms are an important element in game theory. Game theory drives much of the mathematics being developed today. It is used in creating the probabilities used for forecasting the weather, quantum mechanics and managing hedge funds. But at its heart is the concept of play. Flusser talks about play in relation to the use of an apparatus, such as a computer.4 We experiment when we play. We try it one way and then try it another until we like what we get. This is the way we live in our digital world. Every day as we use our computers more and more we are playing more and more. It has become the nature of how we work. It is the nature of how we create work. It is some thing we have learned from art. It is how we can strive to find the lovely in numbers, art or life. Here is where Rajinder Singh finds his worlds coming together.


1 Flusser, Vilйm. Towards a Philosophy of Photography, Reaktion Books, London, 2000.
2 Thebaud, Jean-Loup and Jean-Franзois Lyotard. Just Gaming, University of Minnesota Press, 1985
3 Levinas, Emanuel. Entre Nous: Thinking-of-the-Other, Continuum Internationa Publishing Group, 2006.
4 Flusser, Vilйm. Towards a Philosophy of Photography, Reaktion Books, London, 2000.


Ken Feinstein is multimedia artist & theorist. Both his written and art works address the relationship of the work of art and the audience. He has been exhibited in museums & galleries in China, Japan, Germany, South Africa, Russia as well as the United States. His last solo show was Let A Thousand Videos Bloom at the Chelsea Art Museum, New York in 2004

He is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Art, Design, & Media at Nanyang Technical University in Singapore. See www.kennethfeinstein.com

A writeup from Adam Gerard, Brand Champion - Tiger Translate

Following a recent call for submissions of artwork that reached across the Asia Pacific region, Tiger Beer is delighted to announce that new work by Dr Rajinder Singh (Malaysia) has been selected to join the growing, international body of work that makes up Tiger Translate.

Tiger Translate is a platform to support emerging Asian artists from all creative disciplines including painting, sculpture, photography, graphic design, animation and music. Now in its third year, Tiger Translate consists of a global series of events and exhibitions held in countries from New Zealand to Singapore, from Thailand to the UK, from Vietnam to Denmark.

Dr Singh’s stunning work was in response to the theme ENERGY. As Tiger Beer embodies the energy, colour and variety of modern Asia, artists were asked to visualize ENERGY in the context of contemporary Asia.

For more information, please visit www.tigertranslate.com

Les Fruits de la Vigne

I am totally chuffed to be invited as the surprise guest artist at Singapore's grandest affair..see attached leaflet. There will be amazing people there that have made a name for themselves from all over the world. It will be a grand night.
See here