“You have to keep creating and savouring the moment. Time does not bargain with anyone.” – Andy Yang
Art often possesses an elusive quality. Inherently subjective, sometimes difficult to understand, yet brimming with the potential for emotional resonance, it has the power to fascinate and frustrate in equal measure. A painting, after all, can speak a thousand words or none at all, and sometimes in a language that feels indecipherable.
Andy Yang appears to breathe within this ambiguity. The multidisciplinary artist moves freely between painting, drawing, installation, performance, and music, approaching each as another means of exploring feeling, instinct, and the less easily articulated parts of human experience.
Best known for his abstract works, Yang builds compositions through expressive gestures, layered colour, and forms that seem to hover somewhere between order and spontaneity. His relationship with music is similarly embedded in the work. As a musician, he has frequently brought sound and visual art into conversation, both on canvas and through collaborative performances and installations.
This fluidity has carried Yang’s practice across some of Singapore’s major cultural institutions, including the National Gallery Singapore, National Museum of Singapore, Asian Civilisations Museum, and ArtScience Museum. His choice of canvas has occasionally been less conventional, too. In 2023, he transformed an Audi e-tron GT into a kaleidoscopic work of art, extending his expressive visual language across the body of the electric sports car.
Through it all, Andy Yang has resisted being confined too neatly by medium or format. Painting may sit at the centre of his practice, but the boundaries around it remain deliberately porous, leaving space for sound, performance, collaboration and, perhaps most importantly, the unexpected.
After more than two decades as an artist, which milestone stands out as the most significant?
To finally find my own voice and signature style through years of searching for it. It has reached a point where it has become second nature to simply be me in every work that I make.
What’s the most important lesson you’ve learnt throughout your artistic journey?
You have to turn up every day at the studio so chance can happen. Even if you can’t, start a drawing wherever you are. You have to keep creating and savouring the moment. Time does not bargain with anyone.
What motivates you to keep moving forward during challenging times?
I tell myself to keep creating and exploring. Tough days are also precious lessons in our life journey and they shall pass.
What is one habit that has shaped both your personal and professional life most profoundly?
Waking up early and focusing on my work. Mornings are a gem. I tend to lose track of time when I’m working in the studio, so organising my time and schedule is something I’m still trying to improve.
What do you wish more people understood about being an artist?
Our minds are working all the time. In fact, we never really rest, even after the physical work is done.
Where do you turn when you need a fresh perspective?
Long walks to nowhere work all the time for me.
And what do you enjoy doing when no one expects anything from you?
Drawing.
Photography by Eugene Lee of Enfinite / Hair & Makeup by Sveta Klyn of Suburbs Studio
