Awards
Stone Stack, Year 8: Struggle, 2019
Winner - 2019 UOB Painting of the Year
Stone Stack, Year 8: Struggle, 2019
Oil on canvas
180cm x 150cm
(Photo credit UOB )
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Space Odyssey, 2013
Winner - 2013 UOB Southeast Asian Painting of the Year
Winner - 2013 UOB Singapore Painting of the Year
Space Odyssey, 2013
Acrylic on canvas
170cm x 170cm
(Photo credit UOB )
'The Painting of the Year, Stefanie Hauger’s Space Odyssey, was one that caught the judges’ eyes very early. We came to it again and again, and its striking vitality grew on us. The fact that it works at several levels at the same time certainly keeps the viewer engaged. The method where painting is done without a brush in itself may not be new – but the concept underpinning the process was energetic and exciting. Based on a contemporary interpretation of the symbolism of the ancient Mandala – a form of ephemeral sandpainting and image-making that is close to many Asian and Southeast Asian cultures – the work’s actual fluidity was also conceptually fluid. It is highly evocative, and calls to mind many possibilities at once: Planet Earth, the Blue Planet as seen from outer space, the every-shifting Mandala, which symbolizes the micro cosmos within the macro cosmos, and then there’s the resemblance to a brain scan...as our judge Mr Mok observed excitedly…and as our other judge Mr Chua declared: it is decidedly ‘contemporary’.
Space Odyssey opens many windows for possible engagement – we are invited to contemplate both Nature and Culture at the same time, and to observe the way they intertwine, with delight, and wonder. And – even as it is engaging from a distance, the closer you get, the more you are pulled in, pulled in, into its fluid intricacies.
Stephanie Hauger has pushed painting as a medium a little further in her artwork. It is undeniably a contemporary painting of our times.'
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Dr Susie Lingham, Director Singapore Art Museum
On Behalf of the Singapore judges of the 2013 UOB Painting of the Year Award