PRESS RELEASE | E-CATALOGUE
Featuring works by Iswanto Soerjanto, Liu Liling and Sarah Isabelle Tan
4 – 26 July 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, 4 July 2026, 3pm – 7pm
Exhibition Walkthrough: Saturday, 4 July 2026, 3pm – 3:30pm
<Followed by Introduction to “Indonesia Art World: dr. Melani Setiawan’s archive” from 3.30pm to 4pm, and Book Signing by dr. Melani Setiawan from 4pm onwards>
Mizuma Gallery is proud to present Contemplative Materials, a group exhibition featuring Iswanto Soerjanto, Liu Liling, and Sarah Isabelle Tan. opening on 4 July 2026. Each of these artists work with processes of printing as means and attempts of capturing time. Their works carve out spaces for slowness and contemplation within the blinding speed of everyday.
Iswanto Soerjanto uses alternative processes, such as chemigrams, cyanotype, and gum bichromate printing, to create works that reflect balance in dualities. He experiments with chemical concoctions on photo-sensitive paper to create splatters, ripples, and washes of bright orange, rust red, and golden yellow. In his series ‘Purnama (dan) Tilem’, he draws inspiration from the Purnama (full moon) and Tilem (new moon) in Balinese culture and presents the abundance of the full moon and the introspection of the new moon through the texture and movement left behind in these chemical reactions.
Liu Liling’s works shares a delicate interplay of light and shadow as well. However, she works with photographic imagery and a range of printing methods that includes overprinting and erasing, where printer ink is free to morph and settle into the paper. She stretches the normally-instantaneous process of digital printing into weeks and months as she observes and shapes the printer ink while it forms into image. These imagery, made possible through her deliberate process, conjure senses of both deja vu and nostalgia, and create space to linger in place.
Sarah Isabelle Tan, meanwhile, pulls our attention to the invisible disappearance of time with works that grasps at fleeting memories. In ‘The Timeline: like the delayed rays of a star’, she scans unfixed photograms of botanicals to create snapshots of the photograms as it fades. Like memories as it alter with each recollection before it disappears, her works remind us that no matter how we experience time, the loss of time can only be felt after it has been lost.
Together, these artists catches the unseen movement of time. Through their practices, they highlight the natural ebb and flow of time, its experience relative to space and process, and its unwavering continuation. And by drawing our attention to the present, their works quietly push back on rapid pace of time that engulfs our daily experience and encourage us to pause, sit, and linger in contemplation.
Contemplative Materials, a group exhibition featuring works by Iswanto Soerjanto, Liu Liling, and Sarah Isabelle Tan will run from 4 July to 26 July at Mizuma Gallery, 22 Lock Road #01-34 Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108939. The gallery will open from 11am to 7pm on Tuesdays to Saturdays, and 11am to 6pm on Sundays. The gallery will be closed on Mondays and Public Holidays.
An Opening Reception will be held on Saturday, 4 July 2026 from 3pm to 7pm, with an Exhibition Walkthrough from 3pm to 3.30pm. Following that, in conjunction with the special presentation of “Iwan Effendi x dr. Melani Setiawan’s archive” at Shop at Mizuma, we will hold a session of Introduction to “Indonesia Art World: dr. Melani Setiawan’s archive” from 3.30 to 4pm, and Book Signing by dr. Melani Setiawan from 4pm to 7pm. All events are free and are open to the public, kindly RSVP to info@mizuma.sg.
About the Artists
Iswanto Soerjanto (b. 1967, Jakarta, Indonesia) graduated from the Brooks Institute of Photography, Santa Barbara, California, United States; with a major in Illustration and Advertising Photography in 1988. After which, he ventured into commercial photography, started his own photography business, and worked with a wide clientele of Indonesian and multinational corporations between 1990 to 2014. In 2014, he retired from commercial photography and devoted his time fully into abstract photography as an artist. His solo exhibitions to date include Painting with Light at Mizuma Gallery, Singapore (2020), Purnama (and) Tilem at Orbital Dago, Bandung, Indonesia (2025), and his first solo exhibition Re-Definition at Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, Bandung, Indonesia (2018). He has also been part of various group exhibitions, such as ON/OUT OF PAPER at Mizuma Gallery, Singapore (2019); Art On Paper Amsterdam at Gallery Lukisan, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2018); Beyond Photography at Ciputra Artpreneur Centre, Jakarta, Indonesia (2011); and at Garis Art Space Jakarta (2008) and Bali (2004), Indonesia. Iswanto Soerjanto lives and works in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Liu Liling (b. 1993, Singapore) works with the photographic image, exploring concepts of duration and the experiential nature of the medium, at times situating her work in dialogue with the installation site. Her practice involves a deconstruction of the image through varied approaches to printing and layering to arrive at a new picture plane. By treating the printing process as a site to build, she explores the coming about and making of an image. Her works operate as spaces of transition—suggesting points of departure, a coming into, and stasis drawn from felt experiences, inviting a space where the medium is not merely observed, but inhabited. Liu holds a BA (Hons) in Fine Arts from LASALLE College of the Arts. Recent exhibitions include presentations at the Esplanade, Comma Space, Mizuma Gallery (Singapore), and The Back Room, Kuala Lumpur. In 2024, she participated in a residency at Onomichi City University, Japan.
Sarah Isabelle Tan (b. 1995, Singapore) is an artist and researcher based in the UK. Her practice revolves around a persistent longing to reach towards what remains distant and unresolved. Through light-sensitive and chemical processes, her works emerge through conditions of delay and change. Rather than treating images as fixed representations or records, she approaches them as sites of attempted contact, remaining with the tensions of reaching, holding and letting slip. She is the winner of the HIGH Prize for Creative Excellence 2025, finalist of the Julius Baer Next Generation Art Prize 2021 and a recipient of the Objectifs Documentary Awards 2020. Her work has been published in the British Journal of Photography and exhibited in the UK, Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand. She holds a Master of Research from the Royal College of Art and a Bachelor of Arts, First Class Honours in Photography from the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.
