What is art? Who really knows. But one thing’s for sure, it’s not a pen lying on the floor of a gallery all by its lonesome self.
In a social experiment, Jack Sim, the founder of the World Toilet Organization, spotted an empty exhibit display in the National Gallery Singapore last week and decided to place a pen on the ground to gauge the reactions of museum visitors. Soon enough, a tiny audience gathered around the writing object, snapping photos of the item and wondering how it constituted art.
Perhaps it was fitting that the gallery was showcasing the final few days of its Minimalism: Space. Light. Object. exhibition. People probably assumed it was just another piece they didn’t understand… because art.
Case in point: The 2016 prank by two teenagers who left a pair of glasses on the floor of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and watched from the sidelines as museum-goers took pictures of the fake installation.
Sometime later, when Sim ventured forward to take back his pen, people realized it wasn’t art after all. Although if they’d gone in for a closer look, they’d realize the pen was actually stamped with “parkroyalhotels.com.”
According to Sim, the display was an actual artwork titled 5’ x 5’ (Inched Deep), a recreation of a work that Cheo Chai Hiang had submitted for the Modern Art Society’s exhibition in 1972. The original piece had instructions for a blank square measuring 5’ by 5’ to be drawn over the wall and its adjoining floor, but ultimately was not shown.
It’s considered to be one of the earliest examples of conceptual art in Singapore, although it’s understandable that visitors would be a tad confused as to whether the empty space was an actual work of art or not.
In a follow-up post, Sim said “contemporary art needs explanation.”
“The signage did not do a good job this time,” he added. “Very often people see arts and ask, ‘Is this Art?’”
“There’ll be pieces you like and others you don’t, as well as others you are clueless about,” he explained. “Just relax and enjoy whatever connects with you. It’s like looking at girls, some attract you and some don’t.”
