Galerie Oasis

in memoriam

YANG YU (Still Here)

an exhibition of photography by

LEO ‘SINGTO’ GAUVAIN   (b.1994 – d. 2017)

2 – 24 February 2019

As if he knew that sudden, senseless death was coming, promising young British-Thai artist Leo ‘Singto’ Gauvain, Bangkok born and bred, titled his last series of photographs ‘Yang Yu’—Thai for “Still Here”. As if to say that ‘I’ am always and death is only of the body, crushed by a highrise builder’s carelessness as he walked past a Sukhumvit construction site. The dreamlike photographs of ‘Yang Yu’ remains, reminding us forever of his potential: his acute sensitivity and gentle sympathetic gaze; the sincere, unsentimental melancholy; his instinct for profoundly satisfying form and texture. ‘I’ am always.

Photographer Patrick ‘Shrimp’ Gauvain says of his son: “Leo was a creator, innovator and epistemologist… the philosophy of the nature of knowledge, justification, and the rationality of belief… his soul, spirit and ideological beliefs will surely live on in his work.”

Leo ‘Singto’ Gauvain: “The body of work I create stems from a personal issue – my inability to accurately communicate and verbalise my thoughts. In my attempt to express raw, subjective, human emotion, I found that this work isn’t about accurate communication but instead another way to communicate.”

Newly graduated with honours in July 2016 from the Arts University Bournemouth (AUB), Leo ‘Singto’ Gauvain pursued a career in publishing, curating, photography and design. Before his tragic and untimely death just over a year later at the age of 23, he started his first design/publishing business called ‘the button, press”.