i was at a certain large downtown law firm getting lost looking for my meeting room when i came upon two beautiful and large lithographs on a wall in a passageway. one i was barely interested in but the other, a 2002 work, was absolutely heart-stopping. it is both recognisably chua ek kay and yet not quite like anything i’ve seen of his before, and which must have been produced during his very first residency at the STPI. (no image i’ve found on the internet comes even close to correctly conveying its scale, colour gradation and texture, so i won’t bother.) i could have stayed there looking at it all day but the security guard was shooing loiterers out.

what crept in underneath all my breathless longing was envy (and grudging admission: big firms can afford to put real art not kitsch on the wall) and then i thought of every art heist movie i’ve ever seen. (not that i want to own it you understand (although i do) — i just felt like liberating it from its neglect and offering it up for the public gaze.) what depressed me more was that after class (admittedly i’m no salesperson) i tried to point it out but could not even get one of my classmates, all rushing off to tomorrow’s assignments, to stay even one minute to look at it.

my other niggling torment is that after my last class (in november) i shall never be able to see the work again, for naturally i am not the kind of person who could ever afford to be a client of this particular firm (and indeed, had i been wealthy enough to require the services of a posh downtown firm i should be happily spending money on lithographs not lawyers.) this is causing me considerable unhappiness.