pianomania: I STILL DON'T GET MODERN ART: WHERE THE CITY SOFTENS by HANS CHEW

Caution: Men at Work.

I still don't get modern art. Wandering around Esplanade just before Tze Toh's Unwelten piano recital, I chanced upon a new exhibition of modern art called Where The City Softens by local visual artist Hans Chew. At first, I thought part of Esplanade had been fenced off for the usual repairs or restoration, but no, they actually paid someone to do certain installations.

Trying to understand the situation better, some form of explanation had been included. Catch phrases like "inherent value of making" certainly helped to differentiate items which were "functional and non-functional", "essential and the trivial", "discarded and abandoned". There was also on display a "repository of objects that contemplate our anthropic relationship with the material environment". Yes, that's so much better.

I thought I'd have some fun to try and distinguish which parts of the exhibition were essential and which were trivial, and which were functional and non-functional. This reminds me of a game we used to play on Sesame Street, "One of these things is not like the others". So here are the photos.