Anat Ebgi is pleased to announce Sayang, an exhibition by Singaporean artist Alvin Ong. This is Ong’s first solo presentation in the United States and with the gallery. On view at 6150 Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles from May 24 through June 28. An opening reception will take place on Saturday, May 24 from 5-7pm. Ong is known for his paintings that capture rituals of queer diasporic identity and community in surreal, bodily imagery. His scenes of intimate domestic moments and introspective private rituals, created for this exhibition were completed during the past year in between his studios in London and Singapore—imbuing the works with a dreamy and transitory sensibility. The paintings stir the kind of existentialism and wistfulness one feels looking at the world from an airplane window—flashes of memory and hopes for the future. Mining tropes of identity and cultural memory, Ong’s allegorical spaces of belonging subvert our expectations of reality, held together by a sense of fragility. Food references and objects function as charged markers of both memory and nostalgia, associated freely alongside references to sacred imagery, art history, and ordinary lived experience. The glow of a cellphone, steamy embrace in a bathhouse, or a stack of bowls are treated with equal symbolic importance. Ong’s figures remain evasive, often camouflaged within their surroundings through painterly layers of light and transparency. Screens and reflections obscure or reveal their subjects in equal measure. Blurring the distinction between private and public spaces, viewers are implicated as voyeurs through glimpses of Ong’s subjects; his treatment of the delineations of space—figure/ground, inside/outside, psychological/physical—leans into a territory of ambivalence, opening the paintings up to multiple readings. The compositions are dominated by recurrent soft, bulbous forms. Solid, yet yielding, suggesting flesh, cloud, stone, vessel, halo, hands, and feet. At times they coalesce against the edges of the canvas in Baroque ecstasy, supported or bound by the edge of the picture, erupting and dissolving inward. In a suite comprising five canvases, Quintet for a new Beginning, Ong layers narrative elements with explorations of a shifting landscape. Repeated across the canvases, the motif of a hand acts as a vessel, a frame, a catalyst of change. This fluid sensibility in form and meaning lends itself to the title of the show, Sayang, a word of Malay origin commonly used in Singlish (or colloquial Singaporean English). The word translates to “love” or “darling,” and entwines together the threads of intimacy throughout the show. However in particular contexts, Sayang can also signify “pity” or “regret,” heightening Ong’s explorations of the insecurities that arise in the search for selfhood. Sayang is a filter, a lens capable of illuminating the inherent beauty and tension between desire, distance, and belonging. Alvin Ong (b. 1988, Singapore) received his MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art (London) and BA from the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. His work has been exhibited internationally, including solo presentations with Ames Yavuz (Singapore, Sydney), Bank (Shanghai), Rodolphe Janssen (Brussels) and Various Small Fires (Seoul). His work is held in numerous public and private collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Peranakan Museum, ILHAM Gallery, X Museum, SunPride Foundation and UOB Art Collection. Recent press includes features in Tatler, Ocula and Juxtapoz. He lives and works between Singapore and London. _____ Anat Ebgi is pleased to announce Agua de vida, an exhibition by Mexican artist Ileana García Magoda. This is Magoda’s first presentation in the United States and features new paintings and works on paper. On view at 6150 Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles from May 24 through June 28. An opening reception will take place on Saturday, May 24 from 5-7pm. In this exhibition of new works, Magoda explores la mar (the sea) as the creative mother and primordial womb of existence. Her paintings on canvas and works on paper delve into ancient mythologies, where the ocean represents divine feminine power and the mysterious depths of consciousness. Magoda’s dynamic compositions, filled with undulating forms, mirror the perpetual motion of the sea, while red waters transform emotional turbulence by creative force. Dense and vibrant, the works in Agua de vida (Water of life) consider the ebb and flow of inner transformations, hinting at alternate pain-free realities. In esoteric and mythological traditions, water represents human emotions. It is the elemental manifestation of the full goddess, consciousness, the absolute. Tides carry us back to these primordial origins, to eukaryotes and archaea, organelles and protists, floating forms. Magoda’s gestures bloom like divine apparitions, her imagery coalesces and dissolves in the eternal dance of creation. In this aqueous realm, memory and myth emanate as a dream, offering a glimpse into a time before time. As Magoda delves deeper into the metaphysical, she turns inward. Connecting her artistic practice to an embodied experience of life, she has begun experimenting with myofascial release, a hands-on massage technique that can be performed on one’s own body. Pressure is applied to various nerve points to hydrate the muscle-joint connection and consequently release pain, improve circulation and range of motion. This therapeutic practice grounds a daily awareness of her own bodily experience, which she channels into her paintings. Pain and relief appear as point and counterpoint. Through these works, the body becomes both subject and medium, an aqueous archive where sensation, memory, and creation converge. Ileana García Magoda (b. 1985, Mexico City) studied Graphic Design at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City. Magoda has exhibited her work internationally at galleries including Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles / New York; Bernheim Gallery, Zurich, CH; Whitewall Projects, Paris, FR; EDJI Gallery, Brussels, BE; and The Black Piglet, Mexico City, MX, among others. Magoda lives and works in Queretaro, Mexico. Image: Alvin Ong "Friend," 2025