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At what point does love stop being a choice and start being a habit? It's a question Indonesian artist Clasutta explores through oil on canvas.
Her piece titled Curated Love makes the stakes clear. Against a pale pink background, 12 fish are sealed in plastic bags, like a roadside pet stall. Most swim alone but some are blessed (or cursed) with romantic partners. On the top left corner, a pair is locked in a kiss. At the center, two are seemingly trapped together against their will.
The piece is one of about 60 works Clasutta produced over nearly a year for Roommates, now on display at Whitestone Gallery Singapore as part of "Through Reverie: Love and Memory," a duo-solo show alongside Malaysian artist C.k. Koh.
Her exhibit arranges the entire arc of a relationship as a sequence of childhood games, told through fish in plastic bags, pigeons on candlelit dates and animals tangled together against their will.
"When I created this series, it started with a simple question and curiosity about love. Something that starts lightly, almost like a game, gradually takes its way. Then I created a series of sketches about how animals and humans can connect with each other, from strangers to someone special,” she said.
“One of them is Curated Love. It shows how we interact with a lot of people in one frame, especially choosing which fish you want.”
Lust, love and losses
Clasutta named each stage of the journey after a pastime activity that holds a nostalgic charm of backyard play: Hide and Seek, Red Light Green Light, Truth or Dare, Check and Mate.
Hide and Seek represents the first stage: attraction. "Attraction starts as a game of performance. Everyone shows just enough. Hiding flaws, revealing highlights, hoping to be found, but not too quickly," she said.
The first work in the collection, Version of You, shows a sheep playing hand shadow puppetry. Against a dark background, the sheep casts the silhouette of a wolf, presenting itself as the predator in disguise. Subsequent paintings show an animal at the center of the frame surrounded by other creatures, portraying the act of choosing a mate.
Clasutta also draws on figures like the Pied Piper: one canvas features a cat playing an instrument as mice gather around her, and other works in this stage take visual cues from claw machines and whack-a-mole.
"So maybe my work can look cute or fun at first, but it holds something heavier under it," she said.
Red Light, Green Light covers the early days of romance. Its centerpiece, Just the Two of Us, shows a pair of pigeons sharing a candlelit dinner. "The animal is a pigeon because when you see pigeons, they always eat anywhere, everywhere," Clasutta said.
The surrounding paintings follow animals, iguanas, octopuses, giraffes, in pairs, beginning to entangle with each other. "When we are with someone that we love, we feel that it's just the two of us. It feels romantic whether the place is really good or not."
The mood shifts in Truth or Dare. The paintings grow less cheerful as the relationship deepens and complications set in. Animals appear joined together against their will, suggesting how challenges can make or break a couple. One key work recalls a Russian doll, with each layer peeling back to reveal someone's truest form.
"The theme itself is really cinematic because I created a series of relationship stages in it. That's why I can show how it becomes a game at first, until it feels nostalgic and somehow you can also feel trapped inside it, but still wanting to be with that person," Clasutta said.
The final stage, Check and Mate, returns to the question posed in Curated Love: Is a relationship a sweet trap, or something we choose to stay in? By this point, loving someone has become a habit, as if there were never another option, whether we want it or not.
Clasutta credited the gallery with helping shape the collection's final form, sometimes prompting her to revisit the arc from the beginning to ensure the stages held together as a whole.
Cross-country collaboration
A Singapore-based gallery showcasing artists from Indonesia and Malaysia is still relatively rare in the region, even as international collaboration has grown through events like Art Jakarta.
For Clasutta and C.k. Koh, the connection predates the Whitestone show.
"I exhibited my work at Art Jakarta alongside C.k. Koh," Clasutta said. "When we were there, Whitestone Gallery manager Priscilla [Quek] thought it would be fitting to connect our stories, because although the characters are different, we share a similar language."
According to Priscilla Quek, gallery manager at Whitestone Gallery Singapore, both artists consistently work through themes of love, memory, personal experience and quiet reflection, expressed through very different visual languages. The shared focus on everyday moments is what makes the pairing feel coherent.
"While Clasutta approaches emotions with humor, wit and subtle irony, C.k. Koh presents moments of sincerity and contemplation through the journey of Box Boy. Bringing them together allowed us to create a dialogue between strength and gentleness, playfulness and vulnerability," she said.
Complementing Clasutta's relationship stages, C.k. Koh's Folded Glimpses draws from his personal photographic archive, capturing impressions shaped by memory, passing scenes and quiet encounters from everyday life. "Like a letter slipping effortlessly into a slot, these scenes found their way into the corner of my heart. Not because they were loud, but because they were true," Koh said.
"What connects Clasutta and C.k. Koh is their deeply human approach to storytelling," Quek added. "Both artists explore themes of life, love, memory and emotional experience, but in contrasting yet complementary ways.
“Together, their works create a balance between lightness and introspection, an invitation to consider how we carry our memories, whether we choose to laugh about them openly or quietly revisit them in moments of solitude."
"Through Reverie: Love and Memory" runs through June 28, 2026, at Whitestone Gallery Singapore.
