By Michelle Cheung
Wong Lip Chin: Baby I Nicht You (Oil and acrylic on jute)
Traveling to Singapore in search of the next big artist was not exactly on the top of my mind as I visited this tiny country in Asia last month. But the local art instigators at CulturePush, Ci’en Xu and Michele Adriaens, convinced me otherwise. High hopes were established by these two. To them, twenty-two year old Wong Lip Chin (or Lip, as he is called) “will make it” in the sparse art world of Singapore, where the art climate is generally discouraging for creatives, and in the dense art world of beyond. Lip, in the duo’s preamble to me, is an artist that Singapore has never seen before. His art and the artist’s own personality, in the country’s terms, are uncannily unique, outstanding, and assertive. With some exaggeration, he could just be the Jesus that the country’s art world has been waiting for.
