Among the artists from the Modern Art Society and Alpha Gallery, Tan Teo Kwang probably has been the only one, whose modernist exploration has been fully and constantly based on the cultivation of aesthetic resources from brush-and-ink tradition. Learning from Chen Wen Hsi and Chen Cheong Swee during the time in Chinese High School in the 1960s, Tan grasped some basic technique and knowledge of traditional ink painting and calligraphy. Afterwards, the study at St Martin’s School of Art in London opened up his creative vision, which expanded to the domain of modernism and the abstraction. Unrestricted by the rules and conventions of traditional ink painting, Tan’s creation freely exploits the formalist potentials derived from ink-and-brush heritage. The work “Calligraphy or Painting” produced in 1967 exemplifies Tan’s early experimentation on integrating calligraphic characters into part of the image-making. The work was selected for the Young Contemporaries exhibition at Tate Gallery in 1967.
