Solo Exhibitions — Samuel Xun

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Decorative Disobedience

22 January–25 January 2025

S.E.A. Focus 2026
Marina Bay Sand Expo & Convention Centre
Singapore, Singapore

Curated by John Z.W. Tung
Images Coutesy of Richard Koh Fine Art

Related Artworks

You Need to Relax! (2026)
And It’s Getting Harder! (2026)
The Gossip Machine! (2026)
You’re Not a Boss if You’ve Got a Boss! (2026)
IWhat a Deadly Dangerous Thing! (2026)
Never in Our Favour! (2026)
Here, Come, I’ll Clean It for You! (2026)
Your Sign to Take a Hint! (2026)
We Are Not the Same! (2026)
The People’s Princess! (2026)
The World is Your Dominion! (2026)
A Future of Fear! (2026)
Best in Show, Always! (2026)
For Real, I Swear! (2026)
An Artist-Eat-Artist World! (2026)
A Full-on Production! (2026)
This Is All Too Much! (2026)
The Hidden Agendas! (2026)
The Great Gross! (2026)
I’m Here for a Big Slice of Pie! (2026)
The Grand Gesture! (2026)
Utterly Consumed! (2026)
Don’t Rock the Boat! (2026)
A Token of No One’s Appreciation! (2026)
A Hedonist, Through and Through! (2026)

Description

Excerpt from Press Release by S.E.A. Focus

The eighth edition of S.E.A. Focus was held from 23 to 25 January 2026 and, for the first time, staged within ART SG at Sands Expo & Convention Centre, Marina Bay Sands Singapore. Created by John Z.W. Tung, the 2026 edition explored the theme The Humane Agency, showcasing a selection of works by established and emerging regional artists.

In times of unsettling change—of borders, climates, and belonging—it is not simply these shifts that define us, but how we choose to respond. The Humane Agency traced the quiet force of artists who, through image and material, act not as chroniclers of crisis but as participants in the difficult, necessary work of compassion.

Here, the person is neither subject nor symbol, but a site of relation. Across a range of artistic media, this edition of S.E.A. Focus drew together practices that resist detachment. Instead, they insist on proximity: to histories unsettled, to environments imperilled, to lives in motion. The presentation emerges at the intersection of three global currents: the persistence of conflict and the longing for peace; the intensifying ecological crisis; and the movement of peoples across and beyond nation-states. Art, in this context, becomes a mode of attention—slowing perception, deepening feeling, and remaining our capacity to care.

What binds these works is not a single message but a shared ethic: that empathy is neither ornamental nor optional. It is method. It is urgency. It is the first step toward imagining futures less estranged, less extractive, more entangled. The humane, then, is not a theme but a horizon. And the artist—through acts of making, sensing, and remembering—becomes not only witness to the world, but a vital agent in its refiguring.

Excerpt from Artist Statement

The new works presented at S.E.A. FOCUS 2026 emerge from a period of deep reflection, particularly following the revelations of my recent solo exhibition, Welcome Back, Boo. In addition to opening up new directions, the solo also marked a turning point that reaffirmed the material and conceptual threads running through my practice and deepened my understanding of how questions of identity, visibility, and materiality shape it. Whilst textiles and labour-intensive techniques remain central, I find myself more attentive than before to the overlap across medium, meaning and form.

In this new series, titled “Decorative Disobedience”, of twenty-four text-based gilded canvases, text reemerges as a central tool. Its return is not simply a novel revival of past formats, but reflective of a broader shift in my practice that embraces clarity without losing the tactile richness of material. Just as my ruched and specular surfaces conveyed presence and insisted on visibility, text anchor these works in language, reminding me that words themselves can be sculptural, declarative, and intimate all at once.

I have worked with text for a while now. The bulk of my earlier works employed text as a means to quite literally communicate thoughts and ideas, explicitly. Having drifted away from text for the past three years to explore more maximalist abstract outcomes, I find myself, gravitating back to it at this point in time. Perhaps it is a response to the times, in addition to being more grounded with what I have and want to say. Nonetheless, the new works feel like a breakthrough that needed space between my ongoing formats. The texts themselves move between recurring themes of social commentary, belonging, and protection. Rather than raw thoughts, these are chosen moments and realisations that trace my lived experience thus far, both as an artist and as a person still ultimately “figuring it out.”

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Welcome Back, Boo

24 May–21 June 2025

Richard Koh Fine Art
Singapore, Singapore

Images Coutesy of Kahying Gan, & Richard Koh Fine Art

Related Artworks

I Can Dish It, and I Can Take it (2025)
I’ve Never Felt Guilty About My Pleasures (2025)
I Pick My Battles Carefully (2025)
I Play No Games With My Good Judys (2025)
I’m Not Even Going to Dignify That With a Defence (2025)
Oh, so Now You See Me, Ok (2025)
Calm Down, What’s the Rush (2025)
Maybe You've Never Liked Me All Along (2025)
You Do It Your Way, I’ll Do It Mine (2025)
Destruction Comes at a Price (2025)
What Have You Even Sacrificed? (2025)
I Won’t Run, I Have Nothing to Hide (2025)
You Have Quite a Lot to Unravel (2025)
Weave Study 1 (Love Letter, Dissected, Unresolved) (2025)
Weave Study 2 (Ambition, Chanced, Adjusted) (2025)
Weave Study 3 (Friendship, Frayed, Kept) (2025)
Weave Study 4 (Time, Reconfigured, Warped) (2025)

Description

Excerpt from Press Release:

Marking a significant milestone in the artist’s practice, Welcome Back, Boo presents a new body of work created over the past year. Known for his maximalist visual language, Xun draws on his background in fashion to craft works that navigate the intersections of identity, memory, and materiality. Through intricately composed surfaces, the exhibition reflects on how dress and adornment operate as both armour and expression.

Central to the works are simulated weave reliefs, layered textile constructions that function as a kind of secondary skin. These sculptural elements echo the artist’s ongoing exploration of garments as mediators of the self, simultaneously revealing and protecting. The tension between defence and display is palpable, as embellishment becomes a strategy for preserving personal history while projecting individuality.

Each work is painstakingly constructed using a blend of synthetic metallised ribbons and natural materials such as cotton and wool. Xun employs a meticulous hand-aided gathering technique using a sewing machine to shape each strand, assembling them onto textile or wooden backings. Visual patterns are then collaged, permanently pressed, dissected, and remixed to create rich, textured compositions. Wood elements, often multilayered birch ply or mixed ply, are sealed, painted, and integrated with the textile forms, merging structure with ornamentation.

Welcome Back, Boo offers an intimate look into Samuel Xun’s world—where material experimentation and personal narrative converge in bold, tactile forms. The exhibition positions his work within an evolving dialogue of contemporary textile and mixed media practices in Southeast Asia.

Excerpt of Essay by Louis Ho:

Samuel Xun’s practice, like those of his antecedents in the wearable art movement, is positioned in the space of critical cross currents between the white cube and the runway. Trained in fashion design, his focus has shifted from body-oriented garb to wall-bound object – or, more accurately, a conceptually liminal zone that intersects both. A concern with formal elements of materiality, shape and construction, premised on dressmaking skills, informs his latest body of work. In place of painting, sculpting and modelling, he employs a repertoire that includes pattern-cutting, stitching, ruching, folding, boning, draping, and – a trademark element – embellishment. The pieces in the present exhibition, from interwoven panels to fabric-covered armatures, draw on a fashion-derived language as the basis of material adaptation, compositional experimentation and visual fantasy; here, the textile medium provides the crucial connective tissue between couture and fine art. As he notes: “Colour, texture and form are important continuities in my practice. That is especially true at this point, when the world seems to be shifting into the digital realm. The analogue and hand-crafted are vital.”

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Sundry Artist in Residence: The Gift That Keeps on Giving

14 December 2023–30 March 2024

Sundry
Bangkok, Thailand

Curated by Shaun Ling
Images Courtesy of Sundry

Related Artworks

The Gift That Keeps on Giving (2023)
Have Your Moment #1 (2023)
Have Your Moment #2 (2023)
Have Your Moment #3 (2023)
Have Your Moment #4 (2023)

Description

Excerpt from Artist Statement:

‘The Gift That Keeps on Giving’ is a multi-compoment installation for Sundry Bar. Reflecting on the season cues of the holiday season, the work is informed by the cultural phenomena of “cuffing season”, whereby partnership is actively sought out as a remedy for loneliness and the need to “stay warm”. Reimagining the Sundry building as a love letter to the artist himself, a momumental bouquet of florals drape on the its facade. Tapping into the artist’s continued interest in aesthetic interventions that unpack cultural miliues, the proposed set of new works references the artist’s signature floral motif throughout separate floors, with the intention of creating a visual narrative that seeks to be a catalyst for introspection and engagement.

Offering a unique perspective on this intersection between art and hospitality, the environment is envisioned as a glittering monument, layered to address the intricacies and complexities of personal relationships. The artworks shown explore themes of identity-building and kinship, furthering the artist’s ongoing interest in the embodied practice of self-therapy and mental mitigation. Paying homage to the house colours, the works, both inside and outside, take on a mishmash of autumn palettes and bright campy accents. The featured type of works intended for the space will be in an even spread of mediums synonymous with Xun’s practice–a mix of inflatables, textile & text based works, and mixed medium fibre-glass foam sculptures.

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I’m Exhausted, Where is He?

02 April–24 April 2022

Art Agenda S.E.A.
Singapore, Singapore

Images Coutesy of Art & Market

Related Artworks

Psycho Ornamental Ideal Boyfriend I (2022)
Psycho Ornamental Ideal Boyfriend II (2022)
Old Habits Cry Hard (2022)
That’s the Last Time I’m Watering Your Flowers (2021)
Everything Reminds Me of Him (2021)
I Hate You THVIS Much (2021)
Maybe That’s What It’s Supposed to Feel Like (2021)

Description

Excerpt of Review by Writer Nicole Wong for Art & Market:

I’m Exhausted, Where is He? is a glorious explosion of meticulously balanced abstraction, ribbons, and glitter. It is immediately evident that Xun’s works play with ideas of campness. For the unacquainted, and against the contrary instructions from Susan Sontag to avoid defining it, camp is a sensibility that gravitates towards artifice and drama. Camp also began as a kind of unspoken code within communities that shared those same sensibilities.

Each of Xun’s pieces sport an aesthetic extravagance that leans into the exaggerated femininity, customary of drag culture. On first sight, the flamboyance of his works appear at odds with the emotional tenderness of their titles. For example, in That’s the Last Time I’m Watering Your Flowers, Xun’s flowers bloom in gold glitter and a technicolor palette of green, orange and purple. Instead of emphasising finality and loss, the visual electricity of the work gives the effect of a sly grin or a hair toss, as though reminding this nameless ex-lover, “You’re going to miss me when I’m gone.”

Through his work, Xun transfigures the rawness of his emotions and experiences into self-contained, decorative abstractions. In works such as Psycho Ornamental Ideal Boyfriend II and Maybe That’s What It’s Supposed to Feel Like, Xun blatantly gestures towards a romantic ideal while emphasising the artifice of these aspirations through his use of lush materials as well as mod-inspired geometric lines and shapes that contribute to the visual drama.

Every heartbreak is uniquely personal. Despite the many ways we can share them as stories of humour, grief, or at times, growth, each romantic entanglement and dissolution is individually experienced, even for those on either end of the break. To experience ‘I’m Exhausted, Where is He?’ is to be constantly aware of this distance while also relishing in the brief moments of community that come from commiserating over yet another bad date or sharing a wink over an inside joke.

✷ EXHIBITIONS