The Edge of Grey, 2021
Wyn-Lyn Tan is a visual artist working primarily in painting. Her practice centres around her observations of the natural world and phenomena, as filtered through her own personal narrative. Intrigued by the invisible forces of nature that affect us, she approaches painting as the art of metamorphosis, often letting serendipity, unpredictability and time drive the work. Trained in traditional Chinese ink painting and Western painting, her work has developed a contemporary visual vocabulary that hover between nature and abstraction. Beginning with a sum of random mark-making, she works towards a place where things no longer feel arbitrary and the work takes over. What begins as a first mark can eventually be obliterated and washed over with a journey of marks that suggest a constant dialogue between artist and canvas.
Drawing upon geology, physics, alchemy and ecology, she investigates the potentiality of painting; at times, working with organic material and naturally occurring processes to discover space, light and new dimensions. In recent years, this has led to works that exist somewhere between image and form, two- and three-dimensional.
Wyn-Lyn has been the recipient of the Kunstnerstipend scholarship (2017) and Statens utstillingsstipend grant (2017), the National Arts Council (NAC) Capability Development Grant (2013), NAC Arts Professional Development Grant in Visual Arts (2011) and Emerging Artist Grant (2003). She has been awarded artist residences with the Inside-Out Art Museum, Beijing (2014), Herhusid Artist Residency, Iceland (2013), The Arctic Circle Residency (2011), and Fiskars Artist Residency, Finland (2007). Her works can be found in the permanent collection of the Singapore Art Museum, and have been exhibited in Singapore, New York, Norway, Finland and Beijing. She is represented by FOST Gallery (Singapore), and Sapar Contemporary (NYC).