SYLVIA ONG: THE LIGHT BETWEEN US

Almine Rech Brussels is pleased to present “The Light Between Us,” Sylvia Ong’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.

November 14, 2024 – January 11, 2025

“Can art really illuminate hope in the world?” This question lies at the heart of Sylvia Ong’s latest series of paintings. In her debut exhibition at Almine Rech, the self-taught artist collaborates with composer Joanna Bieńkowska, who uses the moniker YANA, to contend with whether art can make an impact in our tumultuous world.

With a background in cinematography, performing arts, theater, and music, Ong traverses a multitude of artistic genres to create vignettes of lyrical expressionism that harmonize color and texture with sound. Music and its strong ties to her emotions had been an integral part of her practice long before she realized that she experiences synesthesia, which causes people to see colors, shapes, or movement in response to musical stimuli. For Ong, her strong emotional reaction to music allows her to experience colors and shapes in her mind.

Her artistic process begins in daylight with music and meditation before she sketches preliminary ideas in color pencil and marker. These drawings are then refined on canvas, layer by meticulous layer, gradually building upon her surface with oil paint, oil stick, and graphite. Before landing on her current materials of choice, Ong began painting with acrylic. Years later, she switched to oil paint thanks to its luminous quality and ability to reflect and refract light, a key motif in her latest body of work.

Much like the process of Ong and YANA collaborating over shared feelings of despair on a macro scale, “The Light Between Us” suggests that connection is the salve that can retrieve us from pits of darkness.