Artist statement – Rajinder Singh

 The'CURIO' collection: The idea central to the CURIO series was sparked by the artist's reflections and observations of his home country from the vantage point of one living abroad, and the way in which his country had been depicted in the media by foreign press over the years.  Holding this as the underlying theme, the artist started to explore a 'make believe' world, dreaming up a time in the past when 'Malaya' may have been promoted as a land of living curiosities - foreign, exotic, strange and exciting! - a melting pot of rich and bizarre cultures.  Rajinder's love for textured, weathered surfaces and his penchant for nostalgia, was used to bring this theme to life - in the form of old poster-like images, layered and 'ripped' to reflect decades of a country's cultural evolution. 

 “I took my time in developing this series because I wanted it to be honest and real, a reflection of whom I am.  My last series of paintings emanated from my exploration of aesthetics through the lens of the colliding worlds of maths and art. I wanted to invite my audience to view the paintings through a sieve – a sieve made of mathematical objects that pack a substantial amount of information on the way we might view beauty.  In this series, rather than dive deeper into an aesthetic expression of my past as a mathematician, I took a nostalgic trip down a different lane – I sought to reflect artistically my life as a Malaysian living abroad, I tossed about memories of what Malaysia meant to me, the things I took for granted growing up that in adult years could be interpreted as an outsider as somewhat bizarre and quirky.  I subsequently combined this central theme with my recent experiences at the print making studio in Paris.  The experience I gained there was invaluable in exciting my palate for the aesthetics that you see reflected in this series,’ says Rajinder.

 The'FACES'collection:The FACES collection was launched in France in June 2007. They are 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. I ask the question: what is the numerical equivalent of lovely?

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 skeptical 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 my FACES collection, 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 endeavor.

In FACES, Rajinder alludes to the reductive and transcendent expressions of beauty and commissions and decommissions an explanation in mathematics, even as he prepares for unmitigated failure.

The'source_code'collection:It took hundreds of erased mathematical proofs and smudged formulas to make the background for the paintings in this collection. In and thru my art, I brainstorm about the mysteries, mechanics and mathematics of life and the universal rule of nature.

The'Symbiosis'collection:Rajinder takes the potential of finding a guiding principle in our apprehension of nature and the many unanswered questions that lurk within the study of chaos and builds maps of a surreal and highly visual kind. Someone suggested that Rajinder's paintings are cartographic references to a different dimension.