Current Exhibition

The Columns Gallery is delighted to present First Light, the first solo exhibition in Singapore by Filipino-Chinese artist Maria Tan. Inspired by the atmosphere of awakening into the day’s earliest light, First Light explores the fleeting moment when darkness gradually yields to color and the world begins to emerge into perception. Rather than depicting specific places, Tan creates atmospheric environments that evoke memory, sensation, and the quiet wonder of seeing.

Innerworkings of Dawn, Acrylic on Canvas, 2026, 133 x 284 cm

In Innerworkings of Dawn, luminous veils of pale yellow, lavender, and blue dissolve across the canvas, suggesting the subtle transition from night to morning. Light operates not as a static focal point, but as an emergent presence quietly unfolding through layered color and gestural mark making. Spanning an expansive pictorial field, the work functions as an immersive threshold where dense, saturated clusters of deep purples gradually cede territory to weightless washes of radiant warmth. Evading literal landscape description, the canvas privileges the visceral sensation of waking light, offering a nuanced exploration of ephemerality and temporal transition.

Pond ll, Acrylic on Canvas, 2026, 102 x 152 cm

Pond II engages the viewer in a liminal space where reflections, organic form, and water dissolve into a fluid, unified field of gestures. Passages of low contrast pink, violet, and green generate a stillness activated by internal rhythm, mimicking the optical behavior of a shifting, translucent aqueous surface at daybreak. The composition avoids topological mimesis, focusing instead on the atmospheric phenomenologies of light and liquid interaction. Through a complex stratification of paint, the canvas addresses the fleeting qualities of the natural world, transforming environmental observation into a meditative exercise on perception.

Dandelions l, Acrylic on Canvas, 2026, 122 x 122 cm

In Dandelions II, delicate floral forms emerge from a luminous, atmospheric ground of understated pastel hues. Balancing structural fragility and gestural vitality, the composition transmutes a familiar meadow into a non representational field defined by light, color, and internal rhythm. A dynamic patchwork of brief, deliberate brushstrokes structures the blooming, circular motifs, dissolving the boundary between the subjects and their surrounding space. Through layered transparency and vibrating tones, the canvas shifts focus away from traditional botanical illustration to explore how light scatters through dense fields, creating a compelling, poetic dialogue on impermanence.

Central to Tan’s practice is an experimental approach to mark-making. Alongside traditional brushes, she employs forks and everyday domestic objects, embedding traces of daily life within the painting process. Through repetition, layering, and varied gestures, the works accumulate like memories-simultaneously spontaneous and carefully sustained.

View of Artist’s Studio, 2026

Working across varied scales, Tan transforms the painted surface into an immersive environment that surrounds and envelops the viewer. Forms appear and dissolve, inviting contemplation rather than immediate recognition. Throughout the exhibition, serenity is never static but charged with subtle energy and continuous becoming.

With First Light, Maria Tan invites us to slow down and inhabit the delicate threshold between dream and waking, where light, color, and perception reveal themselves with renewed clarity.