Bbblob (aka: Jacelyn Chua)

Bbblob is the moniker of visual artist and designer Jacelyn Zhen from Singapore. She creates graphic abstract works across various mediums, including painting, sculpture, murals, and textiles. Influenced by her fashion background, Jacelyn expresses herself through a unique shape language of color and pattern. She has exhibited in solo shows at UltraSuperNew Gallery and For the People, as well as in group shows at Uprise Art in New York, Art Porters in Singapore, and Outset in Galway.

Her works have also been featured in showcases such as the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, Sculpture 2052 in Singapore, Mocana in New York, SOJAO in Singapore, and Creative Unions during Singapore Art Week 2021. Jacelyn's collaborative projects include working with textile and interior brands like Yacht 21 in Singapore and Unwind Studio in Portugal to create a range of designed goods, including clothing, wallpaper, and rugs. Additionally, she has created murals for brands such as YouTrip and initiatives like Making Waves SG. One of her public mural projects, commissioned by Orchard Central in collaboration with Mural Lingo, was longlisted for the World Illustration Awards in 2021. Through collaborations and exhibitions, Jacelyn continues to develop her practice in graphic abstraction.


Statement

Bbblob explores harmony in form and color. Her practice in graphic abstraction adopts an emotional and design-influenced approach to painting. Bright, vivid, and organic shapes interact with one another to represent our relationships with ourselves and others, capturing the transient nature of emotions. Expressing her own shape language, Bbblob utilizes a distinct palette of pastel and bright tones that often evoke a calm and uplifting mood.

When creating, she examines how form and color interact, whether within a single painting or across multiple shaped canvases and woodcuts. She is interested in both the forms in the painting and the form of the canvas itself. The interaction of form and color suggests movement and embodies changing states. Her works reflect a constant play of emotions and an ever-evolving state of balance. In the process of balancing forms, her works find rhythm and unity. Inspired by nature and the human body, her forms take shape from still life and daily observations. These forms do not represent anything in particular; instead, they invite viewers into an imaginative landscape.


www.jacelynzhen.com

What is your first memory of creating?

When I was younger, I would make mood board collages from magazine cutouts. It was my way of collecting images before Pinterest existed—keeping folders of cutouts from design magazines. It was so much fun making collages with them. Sometimes, I would also draw the people I saw in magazines, always in my own interpretation of colors.


What is your relationship to your medium? What draws you to it?

I am drawn to making shaped paintings and woodcuts. My interest in working with wood comes from exploring paper collages. While developing my shape language, I enjoy arranging compositions with paper cutouts. I wanted to bring a sculptural element to these cutouts and started experimenting with woodcuts. The relief effect of these shaped works plays with both painting and sculpture.


What is the main thing you hope your audience takes away from your art?

I hope that when people view my works, they can connect with them emotionally. I aim to reimagine natural forms into abstract landscapes to share with my audience a new way of looking at forms and to encourage playful imagination.


Tell us about a challenge you overcame last year.

For one of my collaborations last year with a local wallpaper label, Hello Circus, we wanted to create a mural wallpaper based on an original painting. It was a tedious process preparing the scanned artwork for large-scale printing and editing colorways. I learned about upscaling my paintings digitally.


What is your main goal or resolution this year in terms of your art practice?
This year, I will explore and develop my practice through residencies and collaborations in different cities. I am starting with a screen-printing residency in Ubud, Bali. I will also continue to grow my practice by creating paintings and murals for various spaces.