For thousands of years, mankind has used the stars and its formations as a guide in everyday life. Once in every lifetime, you wake up to find that the stars look different.

We go through life imagining a certain direction or trajectory, that’s how we are trained from a young age. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Every now and then there are answers that are unconventional: lion tamer, astronaut, treasure hunter, artist, etc. Our elders somehow convince us that there is a straight path if you follow the guidelines. Yet for sure after growing up, we learn the hard way that there is no straight path—there are countless ups and downs, disappointments and failures. After the second world war, the planet seemed to be set for continuous progression all the way until we have colonised the stars. 

As someone familiar with the scenic route, Jonathan Ching finds himself in a continued state of processing the events of the last two years – something that somehow feels much longer. Like a quiet moment of reminiscing, he paints scenes straddling the existence around and within himself from the last few months. Throughout the expanse of his canvases, he maintains a focal point, it is a clarity that very few strive for today. His subject matter straddles a curious scope: flowers, statues, random bric-a-brac, among other plain objects. This gesture in a way highlights the core manifestation of art: human perception. What makes art is the human eye and countless ways that it sees. The way paint is applied evokes fragments of colours coming together and also flittering away – a movement in the canvas that keeps the eye drawn to it.

Recent generations know by now that things happen that change plans, derail goals—it’s a part of life. But still no one was prepared for something as extreme as the recent pandemic. The simple act of removing human contact and mobility changed everything, a clear reminder that tsunamis begin from small ripples.

Each of the five works in the exhibition provide a glimpse into life both lived and unlived. Drawn from images in real life and from what has been made accessible through social media, Ching perseveres in his compositions and juxtapositions that meld and mesh elements into a singular cohesive narrative. As natural and commonplace as they appear, they are part-fabrication, meant to emphasise a point. After all, a painting is always a story waiting to be heard.

At times accompanied only by his thoughts, sometimes a song on repeat, he strung several tableaus together, perhaps akin to beads for a prayer. Fruits nonchalantly peering out the window, in view of a red brick building; antique saint statues against a background of light and shade; a lone Chinese deity set down in a jungle – they become metaphorical embodiments of loneliness, of waiting, of watching the world around move on. As definitive of his oeuvre, Ching includes flowers – chrysanthemums – in this series. One is set upon multiple panels—disjointed yet singular in its appearance, slices of life if you will; and another floats within its frame, an ode from space to the one in ground control.

Navigating the remains of a world reeling from isolation, we begin walking the streets with the selves we had either found, rediscovered, or had been reduced to in the past two years. Lockdown gave us time in finding ourselves but also finding ourselves in a time that we are entirely unfamiliar with, or perhaps it is denial. Time will pass, we will age, and we will pass. 

At the core of this exhibition is a small remembrance by way of prayers unassumingly whispered by each painting. For old friends, the familiar land became strange, but as time went by it grew (or was forced to be) familiar. When the strangeness started to go away, they found themselves yet again strangers in a strange land, and it was okay. By then they have become bookends to a great story that will always be familiar.