OEY TJENG SIT14 - 28.10.1981

Oey Tjeng Sit, a 64-year-old Chinese artist, born in Java and now living in Holland, is exhibiting at Galerie S:t Petri from the 14th to the 28th of October.

Oey was originally a pharmacist by profession, but for thirty years he has devoted himself to artistic practice. A few years ago he left the profession of pharmacy and has since then devoted himself exclusively to art. For him, art is a part of life — a way of breathing.

The exhibition deals with the things that surround us and that tend to become our enemies. Among other things, we see a chair on which a pile of newspapers has been tied with rope; a number of sawn-off objects fitted with half-open zippers; a box of stones featuring mirror-reversed letters, which can be read in the mirror placed behind; a box of plaster in whose centre a nail was driven while the plaster was still soft, forming rings that then hardened.

Oey himself is present during the exhibition and on Wednesday at 18:00 he shows two series of slides. One is the result of a collaboration with the German artist Thomas Niggl. It concerns an action in which the entire façade of Oey’s former pharmacy is covered with newspaper and ends with the German artist transforming into a kind of living papier-mâché sculpture.

In the second series we see a cage full of crumpled paper balls that the artist sets on fire. They form a sculpture that exists for four minutes and then disappears.