Chris Yap
About Chris
Chris Yap is an artist whose sensitive approach to creation is often silently evocative. As a fine-art photographer he is one of the rare breed of extremely technical and yet critical thinking photographer, often narrating his stories by exploring the numerous genres of photography to push the boundaries as to what makes an artwork resonate. To find the most optimum approach to convey his stories. His photographic creation never fails to give a sensation of tactility and drama. He occasionally also dabbles in Commercial and Editorial photography.
Besides photography, he has created work in sculpture, theatre, paintings and even fashion art, as well as music. He often reminds the audience that if a story can be told better through other mediums, then question why the use of photography.
Chris’ acute sense of detail and judgement has also helped him push the modern digital print technique. Through his many decades in photography, Chris is able to easily visualise most intent of an image, and working on each image till they are the best they can be. And this skill is rare and is very much sought after by artists and photographer worldwide.
He is a strong believer in the freedom of thoughts that are born in the process of creation, before an image or art piece is completed. Therefore focusing on the processes of each series of work he makes to best tell the stories, rather than on the end result, pushing the boundaries of photography, so as to expand the infinite potential of a creative mind.
His works are usually deemed to be evocative and yet subtle. He incessantly challenges the artistic frontier to expand and explore the diverse possibilities in life. He has exhibited in Musee Du Quai Branly, at Baba House, NUS museum as well as installations at Sculpture Square, Singapore.
As a curator, he is known for his keen sense of space, as well as his unusual and insightful curation methods. Noted ones are those at Esplanade, Arts House, National Library Board Building (Singapore) and Japan Photo Festival (Japan), Photo showcase (Malaysia) etc. His biggest project being a 24 photographers’ show at the National Library. He famously curated a group photographic exhibition titled “incessantly Creative”, where works selected ranged from upcoming and young artists, to established practitioners. It challenged the idea of looking beyond just the work itself into the creative processes undertaken by each artist.
As an educator, he has taught photography in many institutions all over Asia Pacific, and has conducted several critic session in his own gallery. His journey of exploration becomes part of his lectures, where students are tasked to examine how an image is built, and to question their own image building.
His commercial works are showcased in wide range of genres: Fine-art photography, renowned theatrical performances and fashion magazines. He was also been on the international judging panels for photography contests in Japan and Singapore.
