Observations Under the Flyover by Yeo Tze Yang

Friday, April 18, 2025 12:00 PM 12:00
Sunday, May 11, 2025 6:00 PM 18:00

The Back Room 80a Jalan Rotan Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur, 50460 Malaysia (map)

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SUKE. DASH. NORTH SOUTH EXPRESSWAY. DUKE. In zooming on highways across counties, countries, continents, eyes and wheels dead set on destination, what are we blinded to? What lies beneath the flyovers?

This is the question that Singaporean artist Yeo Tze Yang circles around. His first solo exhibition since moving to Malaysia, Observations Under The Flyover marks not a grand migration, but a drift into a different rhythm. Where his earlier wanderings traced the contours of an entire island city-state, here Tze Yang’s attention settles on Pandan Jaya, a neighbourhood neither central nor peripheral, pinned between the arterial highways of the Klang Valley. Working, walking, seeing every day in the area around his studio, Tze Yang’s practice is shaped by routine. In this act of dwelling, he paints not from nostalgia, but from being somewhere long enough to notice the shape of a footpath, the lean of a stall, the glow of a shop sign after dark.

Through this slow attention, and in his stubborn resolve on painting the ordinary, he renders what most would pass by: a muddy drain under the MRR2, graffitied concrete walls, a car left to rust, a celup tepung stall clinging to the edge of a lot, a lone figure crossing a dimly lit street under the glare of a streetlamp.

It is not grand commentary, nor romantic ruin. But in the works, there is an insistence: that even in the in-between, there is something worth seeing. The Back Room invites you to see.

Exhibition dates
18 April – 11 May 2025

Credits
Texts by Ong Kar Jin
Exhibition identity by Ejin Sha
With thanks to FOST Gallery

About the Artist

YEO Tze Yang (b. 1994, Singapore; based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) is a self-taught painter whose evocative, representational works capture the overlooked, liminal spaces of urban life. Since 2013, his practice has remained rooted in an enduring fascination with the unseen: fragments of daily existence that often escape notice.

Acting as a visual archivist, Yeo navigates his surroundings with an acute sensitivity, documenting forgotten people, places, and objects through his phone camera before distilling these fleeting moments into paintings. His approach, driven by intuition, transforms the ordinary into the profound, forging a dialogue between lived experience and the social frameworks he encountered during his studies in Southeast Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. While painting remains central to his practice, he extends his explorations into sculpture, electronic media, and writing, expanding his engagement with materiality and narrative.

Yeo’s work has garnered significant recognition, including the Silver Award at the UOB Painting of the Year competition in 2016. In 2022, visual arts journalist Helmi Yusof hailed him as “the fastest-rising figurative artist of his generation” in Singapore. His works have been exhibited extensively at institutions such as The Substation, National University of Singapore, and Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, alongside regional exhibitions and art fairs in Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia.

His paintings are held in prominent collections, including those of the National University of Singapore and UOB, as well as private collections across Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia, Switzerland, Denmark, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Yeo Tze Yang is represented by FOST Gallery, Singapore.