Building a home around Chen Wen Hsi's murals

In the last 40 years, the bungalow sitting at 5 Kingsmead Road in Bukit Timah has had to undergo major reconstruction twice.

- Clement Yong

Its first reinvention was after the original owner, pioneer Nanyang artist Chen Wen Hsi, died in 1991. Fellow Singapore artist Tay Joo Mee bought the house in 1998.

The second, and latest, overhaul came just before Covid-19, when psychotherapist Audrey Koh, searching for an abode near her daughter's primary school, found the place. She is the first non-artist to inherit the site, but she, too, has been drawn into its artistic history.

From the sloping street in the quiet precinct today, an over 4m-long abstract mural is visible through floor-to-ceiling glass.

Hoisted into the house in 2023, the artwork is the foundation stone of the newly erected house—now comprising a basement, two floors and an attic—which is 50 to 75 per cent larger than its predecessor.

The playful Cubist work, titled Studio I, was painted by Chen onto a brick wall near the front porch of his house between 1961 and 1964. On the obverse side is a later, smaller work, Studio II.

Both now sit in relative comfort in the air-conditioned first floor of Ms Koh's home, surrounded by understated concrete-finish walls making no secret that everything about the house is playing second fiddle.

The murals' transposition, from the outside in and elevated a few metres above ground to accommodate the basement, was a complex operation involving nearly 60 conservators, architects, gallerists and a documentary crew over six years.

Ms Koh, 52, points to the rebars and concrete which she has opted to keep as part of the mural display, artefacts of the mammoth enterprise that has been the source of much nerves, brain-racking and the occasional nightmare.

The previous house owner had agreed to the sale only on condition that Ms Koh preserved the murals—to which she, having no inkling of who Chen was then, agreed to without much thought.