Inside The Whale's Belly

2016

 

This body of work brings together a group of modestly scaled works made by the artist from 2016 onward. It is a study and visual commentary on the status of the urban environment. Responding to growing social and environmental concerns that had long been suppressed or overlooked. While the paintings serve as portraits of the modern city, they depart from overt figuration, aiming to create a reflective ground to stand on. 

 

St Leon conveys the densely populated landscape through the guise of abstraction, in which he condense architecture and time. A concrete and steel structures are circumvented by delicate yet complex ink strokes on paper by bamboo-made brushes. 

 

Through this series, St Leon directs his poetic and imaginative sensibility toward the beauty and flaws of the modern cities in order to identify alternative directions that a metropolis could take.