Ruben Pang

Ruben Pang (b. 1990, Singapore) graduated in 2010 with a BA in Fine Art from LASALLE College of the Arts. Identified early on as one of the rising stars of Singapore’s contemporary art scene, his works were featured in The Singapore Show: Future Proof at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), which later acquired his paintings Type 0 Civilization (2018) and Fear of Lying (2020). Pang has since exhibited internationally, including at The Figure in Process: De Kooning to Kapoor (Paul Allen Brain Institute, Seattle, 2015), Meccaniche della Meraviglia (MO.CA, Brescia, 2018), Contemporary Chaos (Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium, Norway), and Medea (Antico Mercato di Ortegia, Italy, 2023).

In 2014, Pang joined the first START Residency in Israel, where a curatorial concept was developed specifically for him.

Raised in Singapore in a family deeply shaped by both military and spiritual traditions, his father served in the army, trained by Israeli intelligence, and later became a healer and exorcist.

Pang grew up navigating between discipline, faith, and mysticism. This background deeply influenced his art, which is less concerned with physical likeness than with channeling energies: ghosts, spirits, apparitions, and dreams.

For the residency, Pang was invited to reimagine stories from the New Testament, creating visionary interpretations of biblical scenes such as The Last Supper. As his thinking broadened, he expanded to Old Testament themes, producing powerful paintings that fused religious narrative with his own spectral, psychological language.

Pang’s artistic process centers on automatism and the drama of the human condition. Working without a preconceived image, he lets compositions surface spontaneously, describing it as “searching for a melody in white noise.”

Using oils, alkyds, and acrylics on aluminum panels, he paints, scratches, and erases with brushes, hands, palette knives, and sandpaper, building luminous layers that project states of mind as much as imagery.

His practice extends into ceramic sculpture and music collaborations, each reinforcing his exploration of dynamism, conflict, and transformation.

Rejecting binaries between abstraction and figuration, Pang embraces both experimental and traditional approaches. His works- whether paintings, sculptures, or performances, are less finished objects than living worlds: visual journeys distilled from energy, psyche, and vision.