Jahan Loh

Biography

In 2006 the Esplanade arts centre in Singapore opened “COLLISION”, an exhibition Jahan Loh made together with John Matos. It was the first graffiti show held in a formal art institution in the city. Loh was then about thirty, and he already had years of work in Taiwan behind him.

He was born in 1976 in Singapore and comes from a Hakka Chinese family. He attended St. Joseph’s Institution. At seventeen he took up street art. From 1997 to 2000 he studied fine art at LASALLE College of the Arts on a scholarship from Singapore Press Holdings, then specialised in design and in 2002 received a master’s degree from the University of New South Wales. In the same year, 2002, he made his debut in pop art with a first solo show, “CHERRY POP”. After that he returned to Singapore to serve out his scholarship bond: at The Straits Times, which belongs to the same publishing group, he drew cartoons and infographics. He broke the contract in less than a year, when he was offered a job in Taipei. In Taiwan Loh worked at MACHI Entertainment under its creative director, Jeffrey Huang. In 2005 he became known for his drawings for the CD sleeve designs of the hip-hop group Machi and for its music videos. He won several Taiwanese music awards, among them MTV’s CD Cover Design of the Year. In the boom years of the Taiwanese music industry, Loh and Jeff Huang (黃立成), together with Huang’s brother Stanley Huang, founded Invasion Studios, which designed album covers and made music videos. When the spread of MP3s and music downloads sent the industry into decline, the studio shifted towards art and animation. Loh’s work as both a commercial and a fine artist, in the critics’ view, marked a new approach to art practice in Taiwan.

In 2007 Loh signed with MINGART Gallery, and in 2008 he held his first solo pop art exhibition in Taipei. “CHERRY POP II”, with suggestive nude paintings and sculptures, caused a scandal and drew the attention of the press. Taiwanese critics called him one of the artists who had made Singapore pop art international. In 2008 he was selected for “8Q-RATE”, the inaugural exhibition of 8Q SAM in Singapore. After it he took a year’s sabbatical, and in 2009 he showed in Beijing, in the 798 Art Zone, his first solo exhibition in China, “THE GREAT WALL”, sponsored by Vans.

From 2010 Loh painted pictures of popular objects together with Jakuan Melendez and Edison Chen, who worked under the name “Etelier Des Chene”; the three called themselves Treacherous Treis and exhibited at the Museum of Art & Design in Singapore. After nine years in Taiwan he returned to Singapore and created a series, “RECONSTITUTED PHILOSOPHIES”. In it he painted contemporary still lifes of luncheon meat and syrup cans: with ordinary household objects he expressed the experience of cultural diaspora. These works, together with an installation, “Cherry Poke”, were shown at his second exhibition at the Esplanade in 2011. In the same year some of the works were selected by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the exhibition “15 Minutes Eternal” at the ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands. In 2012 his work was shown at a private presentation by Saatchi & Saatchi.

In 2013 his solo exhibition “WORKING CLASS HEROES” was held at Chan Hampe Galleries at Raffles Hotel: paintings with pop-cultural and religious references, dedicated to the unseen heroes of everyday life. The centrepiece was a group of brass reliefs of Jesus, cast by the lost-wax method at a foundry in Thailand, where Loh travelled often. While the work was under way, a fire at the foundry burned down the entire factory, but Loh’s six brass sculptures came out unharmed.

In August of the same year, in Hong Kong, he showed a joint exhibition, “Double Dragons”, with the skateboarding legend Steve Caballero: illustrations on the theme of two dragons.