Maria Tan: First Light
The Columns Gallery is delighted to present First Light, the first solo exhibition in Singapore by Filipino artist Maria Angelica Tan.
Inspired by the atmosphere of awakening into the day’s earliest light, First Light explores the fleeting moment when darkness gradually yields to color and the world begins to emerge into perception. Rather than depicting specific places, Tan creates atmospheric environments that evoke memory, sensation, and the quiet wonder of seeing.
In Innerworkings of Dawn, luminous veils of pale yellow, lavender, and blue dissolve across the canvas, suggesting the subtle transition from night to morning. Light appears not as a fixed source but as a living presence, quietly unfolding through layers of color and gesture.
The painting Pond II immerses viewers in a dreamlike landscape where reflections, foliage, and water seem to merge into a fluid field of marks. Soft passages of pink, violet, and green create a sense of stillness animated by gentle movement, recalling the shifting surface of a pond at daybreak.
In Dandelions II, delicate floral forms emerge from a luminous ground of pastel hues. The work conveys both fragility and vitality, transforming an ordinary meadow into a radiant field of light, color, and rhythm.
Central to Tan’s practice is an experimental approach to mark-making. Alongside traditional brushes, she employs forks and everyday domestic objects, embedding traces of daily life within the painting process. Through repetition, layering, and varied gestures, the works accumulate like memories—simultaneously spontaneous and carefully sustained.
Working across varied scales, Tan transforms the painted surface into an immersive environment that surrounds and envelops the viewer. Forms appear and dissolve, inviting contemplation rather than immediate recognition. Throughout the exhibition, serenity is never static but charged with subtle energy and continuous becoming.
With First Light, Maria Angelica Tan invites us to slow down and inhabit the delicate threshold between dream and waking, where light, color, and perception reveal themselves with renewed clarity.
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The Columns Gallery is delighted to present First Light, the first solo exhibition in Singapore by Filipino artist Maria Angelica Tan.
Inspired by the atmosphere of awakening into the day’s earliest light, First Light explores the fleeting moment when darkness gradually yields to color and the world begins to emerge into perception. Rather than depicting specific places, Tan creates atmospheric environments that evoke memory, sensation, and the quiet wonder of seeing.
In Innerworkings of Dawn, luminous veils of pale yellow, lavender, and blue dissolve across the canvas, suggesting the subtle transition from night to morning. Light appears not as a fixed source but as a living presence, quietly unfolding through layers of color and gesture.
The painting Pond II immerses viewers in a dreamlike landscape where reflections, foliage, and water seem to merge into a fluid field of marks. Soft passages of pink, violet, and green create a sense of stillness animated by gentle movement, recalling the shifting surface of a pond at daybreak.
In Dandelions II, delicate floral forms emerge from a luminous ground of pastel hues. The work conveys both fragility and vitality, transforming an ordinary meadow into a radiant field of light, color, and rhythm.
Central to Tan’s practice is an experimental approach to mark-making. Alongside traditional brushes, she employs forks and everyday domestic objects, embedding traces of daily life within the painting process. Through repetition, layering, and varied gestures, the works accumulate like memories—simultaneously spontaneous and carefully sustained.
Working across varied scales, Tan transforms the painted surface into an immersive environment that surrounds and envelops the viewer. Forms appear and dissolve, inviting contemplation rather than immediate recognition. Throughout the exhibition, serenity is never static but charged with subtle energy and continuous becoming.
With First Light, Maria Angelica Tan invites us to slow down and inhabit the delicate threshold between dream and waking, where light, color, and perception reveal themselves with renewed clarity.
