CALL

2022
Acrylic, KRINK marker, and pencil on linen canvas
68 x 56 x 5 cm
RT4A2201
Courtesy of the artist

Born from the melodies of a personal Apple Music playlist, Call is as much an artwork and as it’s a narrative, weaving together the strains of musics, digital symbolisms, and human connections. The playlist, which began with songs that spelt the word ‘call’, organically expanded to encapsulate a gamut of 84 songs. Each echoed the word ‘call’ not merely as a verb or noun but as an embodiment of emotional fervour – desperation, passion, sadness, exasperation, disdain, desire, longing, etc. The word ‘call’, often synonymous with telecommunication, metamorphosed in these songs and titles into incarnations of diverse love feelings.

Inspiration struck from an unexpected relic – the ‘téléphone rose’ from 1970s France. More than a cultural artefact, this ‘pink phone’ whispered tales of raw desires and nocturnal confessions. Layers of pink were thus painstakingly applied to the list shaped as a phone, each coat a step away from the initial acid green of the painting. The result was a neon pink so profound that its origins in green and white became inconceivable, mixing the different versions of ‘calling’ with sentiments of loving.

Index