In Place

2009 - 2016

The series was started as a series of semester-end school assignment submissions for figure-drawing and figure-painting classes in the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.

It came to my observation, through conversations with people, that many feel stuck in situations because they had no choice - I find it strange because it seems to me that they had made a series of decisions to arrive at their current circumstances. I thought if only they realize they have made their choices, they will be in place.


An incident with a classmate had caused a sense of violation of values. The love for art turned into inspiration for the series The Gallery. The Gallery expresses what I value when I experience other artworks and fall in love with them.

Some works free the mind and/or end an emotional entrapment; some works spill into the realm of reality and some works, while appearing to be unpleasant, provoke the mind - they "comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable".

The Gallery I had a clothed version but failed miserably and was discarded.

​Clothed figures seem to describe an event limited to a certain time and age while the nude figures give a sense of timelessness.

I was looking at the form for the abstract figure in Dali's Metamorphosis of Narcissus; and drawing a parallel between the form of the hand holding an egg and the thinker. The egg seemed to me to symbolize the potential of thought.

In Place I, Charcoal on Paper, 27.5" x 19.5",​2019

In Place II, Oil on Canvas, 48.0" x 36.0", ​2010

In Place III, Oil on Canvas, 36.0" X 24.0", ​2016

Triptych: The Gallery I, Oil on Canvas, 3 panels of 48.0" x 24.0", 2010

The Gallery II, Oil on Canvas, 24.0" x 40.0", 2010

© 2007 Noc Vvyne Lim