Destination Image: Hilmi Johandi

Ota Fine Arts Singapore is delighted to present a solo exhibition by Hilmi Johandi, “Destination Image”, featuring 14 new paintings and works on paper by the artist. Hilmi’s first solo exhibition with Ota Fine Arts in 2019 saw him drawing reference from archival images of Singapore, in particular postcards and posters between the 1980s and 90s. Over several years, Hilmi furthered his reinterpretation of these familiar and symbolic motifs to probe into ideas of pleasure, escape and representation. In this latest presentation, “Destination Image”, the artist culminates his examinations on the mediation of experience through image-making, and how nostalgia and constructed memory function within rapidly modernising societies.

Destination Image, which lends its name to the exhibition, is Hilmi’s most recent series of work which introduces a closer and more intimate experience through close-up, singular motifs that pursue ideas of pleasure and desire. By scrutinizing these motifs, the artist delves into the core, questioning their superficial representations. Yet, through the cropping these images, he displaces the depicted from its original context, creating a sense of ambiguity and uncertainty, whilst still retaining a sense of familiarity – one shaped by our collective memory and nostalgic sentiments.

This exhibition also includes paintings from Hilmi’s Landscaped Grounds series, whichfocuses on the idea of reinventing spaces, planes and forms of the referenced subject, most of the time with a single theme or a single underlying intention. Like the works from Destination Image, its motifs are sourced from Singapore’s national archives, featuring places of interest such as seaside locations, hotel lobbies, and swimming pools that carry particular visual styles from specific eras and social contexts. Spaces in the paintings are broken up, partitioned, and collaged back together to create a montage of real and imaged landscapes, blurring the line between fabrication and reality. At times, these spaces might resemble theatrical sets, emphasizing their staged and performative qualities. In doing so, Hilmi’s works invite the viewers into an uncanny world that is at once familiar yet foreign upon observation.

Ota Fine Arts Singapore invites you to experience Hilmi Johandi’s painterly contemplations on the constructed realities that shape our daily lives through this presentation. Working with layered compositions and carefully reimagined spaces, the artist reflects on how images, memories, and environments are continually mediated and reshaped, encouraging viewers to pause and reconsider the ways in which perception and experiences are formed.