Yeo Chee Kiong

Born in 1970, Yeo Chee Kiong is an award-winning sculptor known for his thought provoking and unique works that often present playful and unexpected juxtapositions. An alumnus of Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and the Glasgow School of Art in the United Kingdom, Yeo received the national accolade of the Young Artist Award in 2006. His sculptural foray includes serial works in groups with conceptual narratives. Many of these have captured critical attention as well as won him several awards to national acclaim. In 2010, his work ‘The Wind & Wings’ was awarded the Legacy Sculpture for the Singapore Youth Olympic Games.

Currently teaching part-time at NAFA, Yeo holds several appointments as a member of the Public Art Appraisal Committee (National Heritage Board), the Curriculum Development Advisory Committee of NAFA (Fine Art Department), Advisor for Norwegian Artists Abroad (London), and was previously the president of the Sculpture Society from 2005 to 2009.

His current research focuses on the ambiguous relationship between the object and space in the practice of contemporary art, which he explains, ‘My main artistic concern is to question and challenge common visual perception and the shared concept of object and space in the practice of contemporary visual art. How we perceive the natural world and come to believe in it in our own individual ways fascinates me. In my work, I try to articulate the possibilities of the process of “perceiving” and “misperceiving” through a more personal and subjective approach, which is ultimately ambiguous and poetic. As a sculptor and installation artist, I attempt to create a partially indefinable sculptural sensibility of the material world that is “realistic” and “imaginary” at the same time.’