A a self-taught, skilled, and determined painter, Yeo Tze Yang is known for his oil paintings that depict scenes of ordinary life in urban settings. His artworks provide an almost cinematic perspective of the quiet details of daily life, those objects and people in our neighbourhood that might easily slip our attention.
In 2016, Yeo Tze Yang was awarded the UOB Painting of the Year Silver Prize. Despite his young age, he has exhibited widely in Singapore, participating in several group shows and solo exhibitions with local galleries and art fairs. He also had a solo exhibition in Malaysia. His works are part of private collections in Singapore, Australia, the UK and the USA. He pursued his bachelor’s degree in Southeast Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. Determined to be a full-time artist after graduating, Yeo acknowledges the guidance of several artist mentors, including his father, who have helped shape his artistic practice.
Having graduated from university studying social science, Yeo is deeply interested in issues pertaining to the region and the subject matter of his artworks are derived from across the region. His interest in Southeast Asian studies includes issues of race, nationalism and difference, especially in Malaysia and Singapore. His university dissertation was an ethnographic and oral historical piece on issues of race, nationhood, modernity, collective memory and nostalgia, between Johor (Malaysia) and Singapore. Parallel to his artistic practice, Yeo is deeply interested in the intersection points between “big picture things” and the everyday lives of ordinary people. The result of such a process is an accumulation of images, thoughts, emotions, stories and memories, that in turn become allegories of both the artist’s life and the stories that his audiences weave into his works.
Yeo Tze Yang's website: yeotzeyang.com