✷ Welcome Back, Boo (2025)
✷ Sundry AiR: The Gift That Keeps on Giving (2023)
✷ I’m Exhausted, Where is He? (2022)
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
✷ Of Dreams and Contemplation... (2025)
✷ Lady Dior As Seen By (2024)
✷ Of placebos that sing sweet in the... (2024)
✷ Between The Lines (2024)
✷ ASEAN ON PAPER (2023)
✷ Serving Thots (2023)
✷ Diverse Visions (2023)
✷ Nature and Now: Asian Art in Focus (2023)
✷ There Are Flowers in the Morning Mist (2022)
✷ State of Play (2022)
✷ It’s my party and I’ll if I want to, you’ll... (2022)
✷ only losers left alive (love songs for... (2021)
✷ The Foot Beneath the Flower: Camp... (2020)
ALL WORKS
✷ 2025
✷ 2024
✷ 2023
✷ 2022
✷ 2021
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)
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.”
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.”