8 February 2023
Blk 47 Malan Road, #01-26
Gillman Barracks, Singapore 109444 
www.rkfineart.com
#09-1464
Solo Exhibition by Johann Fauzi
Curated by Louis Ho
11 February – 4 March 2023
Richard Koh Fine Art (RKFA) is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of Singaporean artist Johann Fauzi (b. 1962). The exhibition is curated by Louis Ho, titled #09-1464. It is scheduled to run from 11 February – 04 March 2023 at Richard Koh Fine Art Singapore, Blk 47 Malan Road, #01-26 Gillman Barracks, Singapore 109444.
#09-1464 is the first solo exhibition by Singaporean artist, Johann Fauzi, with Richard Koh Fine Art. An aficionado of Baroque and Rococo aesthetics, the artist has transformed the space of the gallery in Gillman Barracks into a replica of his own HDB apartment, an immersive installation that mimics its lush opulence and intimate atmosphere. The show, curated by Louis Ho, takes its title from the unit number of Johann’s apartment, and includes works ranging from large-scale landscape paintings to small still-life images, from ornate furnishings and artifacts to kitschy ceramic sculptures. The interlacing of artwork, found object and furniture highlights the artist’s appropriation of European visual and material cultures as a means of questioning, and destabilizing, the historical power structures they represent, especially in the context of a former colony in Southeast Asia. The ostentatious excess of the presentation is transformed by the presence of one of the primary thematic concerns of Johann’s practice: the recuperation of the Malay-Muslim cultural universe. The act of appropriation, in his hands, becomes a channel of critical counter-colonization, usurping the prerogatives of Western culture to highlight systemic erasure and marginalization.
Artist Biography
Johann Fauzi (b.1962) is a Singapore-based artist who works across the mediums of painting, print, sculpture, and space-making. Trained in classical Western oil painting, he often incorporates these various formats into large-scale, immersive interior installations in the tradition of gesamtkunstwerk, aesthetically integrated environments. One of the primary pivots of his practice is the appropriation and transformation of various Western art historical idioms, inflecting their ideological and iconographic predispositions to reflect the lifeworld of Malay-speaking Southeast Asia. Johann came to art later in life, having first built a corporate career. He is a graduate of the University of South Australia and the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Singapore, and received his M.A. Fine Arts degree in 2019 from a joint program with LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore, and Goldsmiths, University of London. He has participated in various group exhibitions, including “2219: Futures Imagined” (2019) at the ArtScience Museum, Singapore, and “The Foot Beneath the Flower: Camp. Kitsch. Art. Southeast Asia.” (2020) at the ADM Gallery, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He has also staged
several solo exhibitions; his most recent is “#09-1464” at Richard Koh Fine Art, Gillman Barracks, Singapore.
Curator Biography:
Louis Ho is an independent curator and critic. He has lectured at the National Institute of Education, and is a contributor to various journals and publications, such as Modern Chinese Literature and Culture and ArtAsiaPacific. He was trained in art history, and his research interests include Southeast Asian visual culture and the intersections between art and the social. He was previously a curator at the Singapore Art Museum, where his first exhibition was the permanent collection show, After Utopia: Revisiting the Ideal in Asia Contemporary Art; other exhibitions included the Asia Pacific Breweries Foundation Signature Art Prize 2018 show. He was also a co-curator of the Singapore Biennale 2016, An Atlas of Mirrors.
Founded in 2005, with spaces in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Bangkok, RICHARD KOH FINE ART is committed to the promotion of Southeast Asian contemporary art on regional and international platforms. Centred around a core belief in developing an artist’s career, the gallery looks to identify understated, albeit promising practices, and providing it opportunities to flourish. Through its regular exhibition cycles, print & digital publications and cross-border gallery
collaborations, Richard Koh Fine Art engages the art community with the aim of developing regional and intercultural dialogue.
For further information about the exhibition, please do not hesitate to contact Wei Fung at +60 16 491 2644 or the gallery at info@rkfineart.com.
All images are subjected to copyright.
For more information, please contact:
TQPR Thailand
Tom Van Blarcom or Nuie Titichayapon
Tel: 0 2260 5820
Email: tom@tqpr.com | nuie@tqpr.com