Wyn-Lyn Tan and Roya Farassat “Abstracting Materiality”

Sapar Contemporary

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Essay by Beth Citron, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art,
Rubin Museum of Art

Roya, Wyn-Lyn, Raushan and Nina
Sapar Contemporary is proud to present Abstracting Materiality, a two-person painting exhibition of new works by Wyn-Lyn Tan (Singapore) and Roya Farassat (Iran/US). In the work of Wyn-Lyn Tan and Roya Farassat tornadoes, horizons, and faces emerge and disappear, with the tension between recognition and mirage building as one moves among sets of their works and each other’s. For both artists, a dialogue between representation and abstraction is at the fore of their practice, with each transforming elements of material reality into independent worldviews formed by layer upon layer of paint. Through their wide-ranging cultural and intellectual biographies, Tan and Farassat’s quasi-landscapes imagine the ends of Asia, stretching physically and conceptually from the borders of northern Finland to central Singapore, and across Iran and China, while still holding geography as a construct and itself an abstraction.

Roya Farassat
Roya Farassat is an Iranian American painter and sculptor. She was awarded residencies from Henry Street Settlement and Makor at Steinhardt Center and was nominated for the Jameel Prize and Magic of Persia Contemporary Art Prize in London. Farassat’s work has been widely exhibited, including exhibitions at the Queens Museum, Albin Polasek Museum, Ormond Memorial Art Museum, Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum, The Taubman Museum, The Edward Hopper House Museum, Scope Miami Art Fair, Asian Contemporary Art Fair. The Boston Globe, The New York Times, Art Critical and Hyperallergic have reviewed Farassat’s work. She hold a BFA from Parsons School of Art and Design. Roya Farassat resides with her family in New York City.

Wyn-Lyn Tan
Wyn-Lyn Tan (Singapore) has developed a contemporary visual vocabulary that straddles East and West and is driven by a fascination with remote natural landscapes connecting across time and culture. She works with painting, installation and video. She has shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, and her work can be found in the permanent collection of the Singapore Art Museum. Her latest exhibitions include Sea Glass III at Østfold Kunstsenter (Norway), Home as an Irrevocable Condition at Sapar Contemporary gallery, Art Basel Hong Kong (Hong Kong) 2017, and Odyssey: Navigating Nameless Seas at Singapore Art Museum (Singapore). She was also invited to present a collaborative performance Ode to Light at ArtiJuli 2017, Kråkeslottet Senja (Norway). She has been awarded residencies at Red Gate Gallery, Beijing; Fiskars Artist Residency, Finland, Vermont Studio Center; The Arctic Circle Residency; Herhusið, Iceland, and Inside-Out Art Museum, Beijing. She holds an MFA from Kunstakademiet i Tromsø (2017).

Beth Citron
Beth Citron is the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Rubin Museum of Art. Her exhibitions for the Rubin Museum have included A Lost Future: Shezad Dawood / The Otolith Group / Matti Braun (2018), Chitra Ganesh (2018), Henri Cartier-Bresson: India in Full Frame (2017), Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: Try to Altar Everything (2016), Francesco Clemente: Inspired by India (2014), Witness at a Crossroads: Photographer Marc Riboud in Asia (2014), and the three-part exhibition series Modernist Art from India (2011–13). She completed a PhD in the history of art at the University of Pennsylvania in 2009, where her dissertation focused on art in Bombay (now Mumbai) from 1965-1995. Her research has been supported by Fulbright and FLAS fellowships. She has taught in the Art History Department at New York University, from which she also earned a BA in fine arts.