JUN ONG UTILIZES LIGHT AS A PLACE-MAKING TOOL, VIA MANIPULATION OF BOTH THE MATERIAL’S PHYSICAL AND INTANGIBLE QUALITIES.
“Taking something that is so common and creating a very simple intervention that completely transforms a space, this is something that is very inspiring to me,” described KL-based artist Jun Ong, whose works call upon one material that, while commonplace and familiar to our everyday surroundings, finds a new sense of use through Ong’s enactments aimed at invigorating spatial effects via manipulation of both the material’s physical and intangible qualities.
The Star, Image © Jun Ong
“Using light as a place-making tool and as a way to bring forward or showcase things that people don’t often realize,” furthered Ong, are light’s latent potentials that the artist aims to call upon and celebrate. Ong, a guest speaker at this year’s PAM Design Forum of the recent ARCHIDEX 16 event as well as the mind behind the program’s ‘Invisible Room’ installation at the KLAFXPAVILLION is an architect by trade, but often utilizes the spaces falling between art, architecture and design to stage his public installations and interactive works.
The Star, Image © Jun Ong
“I’m interested in the parallels between sculpture and architecture, and how different, or similar, the processes of creating either are,” furthered Ong whose recent work ‘Star,’ a light-based installation that ranks on par with architecture in terms of not only scale but also its place-making nature completely transformed a five-story, unfinished building into something of an enclosure or perhaps stage, capable of capturing and holding both the 12-sided star housed within and the attention of any passersby.
Invisible Room, Image © Jun Ong
“When I first saw the site I immediately fell in love with it, a structurally sound concrete building with no walls, and wanted to utilize what was already there and build from there. The star consists of .5km of steel cables and some 500 meters of LED strips. The spikes of steel cables that grow out from the core stop below the surface of every floor giving the illusion of the form penetrating the building. We had to very carefully mark almost 500 points in the process, of which if one point was off the entire shape would have become distorted.”
Invisible Room, Image © Jun Ong
The star with its light that illuminates the entire site has brought life and activity to the area in a manner that has since prompted the site’s developers to reconsider how they might develop the land in the future – their previous plan of a boutique hotel being re-shaped and configured to potentially include some artists’ studios and other creative spaces and, with that illumination, the work seems to also radiate a sense of metaphor – as it expands through and past the frame it is set within while at the same time imploding in, drawing viewers closer towards its form and, like innovation of any measure, providing opportunity through the prompting of one to look, see and consider what new perspectives have to offer in terms of the big picture. “It all goes back to this idea of things appearing differently from what you may have thought – when you are close to the work it appears as really abstract geometrical forms and every floor is different. You wouldn’t realize it is a star until you step really, really far back.”