How long is forever? The White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland will tell you, “Sometimes, just one second.”

A day could fly by, or it could feel like one endless loop. The concept of Time may be elusive and abstract, but it is also deeply intimate and personal. In Tan’s online exhibition, titled Circadian, the artist tracks her relationship with Time in a series of works that were created during each specific hour of her 24-hour circadian cycle across the lockdown period in Singapore.

Tan experimented with painting on new materials of plexiglass sheets and blocks. Here, her painting moves beyond a typical two-dimensional plane, with each reflective surface of the painted translucent forms shifting and changing according to the quality of light and the angle at which it is displayed. Appearing simultaneously solid and ephemeral, the plexiglass works also suggest the artist’s altering perception of the passage of time as her circadian cycle moved in and out of sync while the world was (and is) in flux.