Hans Tan, the Singaporean designer, curator and educator who won President's Design Award thrice
By Olha Romaniuk -
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A master of storytelling through material experimentation, designer, curator and educator Hans Tan is not afraid to look at everyday objects in new ways. A three-time winner of the President's Design Award, widely known for his works that blur the boundary between design and art, Hans Tan developed his initial interest in design during his perusal of course offerings at the National University of Singapore (NUS).
With his self-admitted strength in business, Hans was drawn to pursing industrial design as it offered a balance of design, engineering and business, which spurred him to give this unique creative career path a chance.
Studied at Design Academy Eindhoven
The rest, as they say, was history. Hans ended up studying industrial design at NUS for four years, followed by a two-year master’s degree at the prestigious Design Academy Eindhoven in The Netherlands, where his design philosophy was shaped by the likes of Joost Grootens, an architect by training but a book designer by trade, and Barbara Visser, a contemporary conceptual artist, photographer, video artist, and performance artist.
Singaporean designer, curator and educator Hans Tan
When Hans came back to Singapore, he knew that he wanted to start his own firm immediately.
“There was no design company at the time in Singapore that worked adventurously with materials and I knew that to do that I had to venture off on my own,” he explains. “I wanted to be a pioneer and a changemaker, to work on projects that were more conceptual and exploratory.”
Outside In transforms porcelain vessels by removing the original glaze surface and exposing the underlying porcelain bisque.
From a broken camera to an antique sewing chest, R for Repair breathes new life into personal possessions.
R for Repair - object after repair.
Spotted Nonya is a contemporary industrial take on traditional Chi- nese-Peranakan porcelain objects.
Material Exploration in Art
Through the years that followed, Hans Tan’s eponymous practice remained consistent in its approach and dedication to material exploration and experimentation with different techniques.
Speaking of the evolution of his design process as he sees it, Hans notes that he has shifted his focus on works that steer towards the material exploration path and are a little less conceptual.
“Nevertheless, for me, the concept is still as important as exploring a material,” he elaborates. “A good design outcome to me is the one that addresses the story and the meaning, as well as reveals a new interpretation of a material – I try to hit that soft spot in the middle.”
Storytelling in Art
Beyond material exploration, works produced by Han’s studio weave in threads of storytelling to reveal and examine how culture and tradition are constantly changing and are never stagnant.
To him, contemporarising tradition is also a way of keeping and moving it forward, as is the case with his Spotted Nyonya series, where traditional Peranakan vessels are reimagined and reworked by Hans with the application of new technical processes.
“Giving a new interpretation of story and doing so by giving a new interpretation of a material is a very important element that I carry on in my practice as a designer,” says Hans.
For the second edition of R for Repair exhibition, designers from the UK and Singapore were invited to repair adored but damaged objects donated by members of the public.
Hans Tan's signature "Resist Blasting"
Resist blasting, a term coined by Hans for one of his signature techniques that involves a removal of a material strategically on the surface of a glaze in a very skilled manner to produce a new pattern on an existing pattern, is a skill that Tan has perfected over the years through rigorous experimentation with materials, tools and processes.
'Spotted Nyonya' series by Hans Tan
Tan started experimenting with resist blasting while working on his Spotted Nyonya series that has garnered worldwide attention and accolades since its launch.
“On a technical side, I was experimenting with different treatments of porcelain and glaze and approached the materials with a question of how I could work with readymade objects (Peranakan vessels) to create something new,” recalls Hans.
He discovered through exploration that applying resist blasting to a fully-coloured vessel removed colour and exposed the white glaze, thusly revealing the underlying beauty of each ware.
Hans used a dotted pattern for his Spotted Nyonya series to create a juxtaposition between modern motifs and traditional elements to create different levels of perception of traditional wares.
A terracotta series commissioned by the National Gallery Singapore
Experimental Art
In his studio, Hans displays tons of his pieces at various stages of material exploration. Some of these pieces might never see the light of the day, and some of them he will continue to work on continuously.
“If I see that there is an interesting resolution, I will finish it as a piece of work,” he divulges, revealing his boundless spirit of exploration.
It is precisely this attention to details and focus on materials, as well as the exploratory nature of his projects, that continues to push him to reinvent and add on to his collections and take on new ground-breaking projects, like his upcoming series of interventions at the new Changi Terminal 2 which will be unveiled later this year.
“I see myself as a craftsman trying to perfect my techniques,” says Hans. “In many of my series, you can see my skill getting extremely precise and detailing very intricate, which I may have not been able to do before. Usually my subsequent additions to my series get more and more complicated as I become more confident in the craft.”
Hans Tan at National Gallery Singapore
In 2016, Hans Tan was commissioned by the National Gallery Singapore (NGS) to reinterpret the motifs from the paintings in the NGS collection using the resist blasting technique, for which the designer has become so known.
“This commission had put me in a very interesting space as I had to work with a potter who has to find a way to fire terracotta pieces so that when the surface of a stone glaze would be blasted away it would still look like terracotta – still reddish,” recalls Hans.
This was the first project where he had to work with a potter to create wares from scratch, rather than working with readymade or found objects. The resulting terracotta series, Terraformcotta, translated the abstract forms of the birds from Chen Wen Hsi’s artwork Herons into repeatable patterns applied to a vase using the resist blasting technique.
Hans Tan Key Artworks & Designs
Photo Studiowongs
Copytiam Chair by Hans Tan (2012)
One of the important early projects for Hans Tan was his response to the brief posed by the Singapore Funiture Industries Council for SingaPlural 2012 to reinterpret a furniture item in any way that the designer saw fit.
“For my reinterpretation, I did a drawing of the kopitiam chair instead of doing something to it physically. To me it was important because I found out that the chair was not original to Singapore; it was the copy of the Thonet chair No.14 designed in 19th century Europe,” discloses Tan.
By creating a detailed drawing, Tan sought to democratise the idea of the chair, so the drawing could be given to any carpenter for accurate reproduction.
"This project made it obvious to me that there is a big difference between originality and authenticity. I came to grips that the chair was still very authentically Singaporean, something that made us who we are and gave an atmosphere to our coffee shops and hawker centres.”
Photo Studiowongs
'Spotted Nyonya' collection by Hans Tan (2011)
The Spotted Nyonya collection launched by Hans Tan Studio in 2011 reinterpreted the traditional domestic wares attributed to the Peranakan Chinese of Southeast Asia by taking on a contemporary approach by applying dotted patterns to the surfaces of the wares using the resist blasting technique.
The first collection, a winner of the President's Design Award Design of the Year 2012, comprised five items: a candleholder, a container without lid, big and small containers with lids and a platter and subtly examined the story of arts and a notion of identity as it related to Singaporeans and people who live in Singapore.
Photo Studiowongs
'R For Repair' by Hans Tan (2021)
Originally debuting at the National Design Centre in January 2021, Hans Tan Studio-initiated R for Repair exhibition explored how creative repair could preserve meaning and breathe new life into people’s possessions.
As part of the design process, Hans and his team arranged conversations between commissioned designers and owners of the donated objects to create meaningful reinterpretations of stories behind the items.
“I wanted to work with a notion that when you repair something creatively and with ingenuity of materials, you can come up with something that is much better than its original state,” he explains.
After the success of the first exhibition, Design Singapore Council and Hans Tan collaborated again on the second edition at the V&A Museum in London. Launching a dynamic design exchange between the United Kingdom and Singapore, the exhibition featured a set of 10 new commissions as well as three objects from the inaugural edition of the exhibition.