As trains occasionally pass outside and movement from the studios above shifts softly overhead, we sit with Singapore-based artist Ian Woo inside his workspace. Canvases lean in progress. Brushes rest mid-gesture. There is a quiet concentration to the room, as if the painting itself is thinking. “My work can be described as coming from the language of abstraction,” he says.
For Woo, painting begins before there is an image. “I enjoy improvising and not knowing sometimes what’s going to happen in the work.” He works through discovery rather than direction. “I work with a very intuitive sense of the space that I am working on,” he explains. “I almost do not know what will appear until I start putting down some marks, some gestures, some shapes.” The painting reveals itself through adjustments — moments that shift, settle, or change as he follows what emerges on the surface. “It’s a slow process,” he notes. “You learn to accept mistakes and you evolve them as you paint.”
Watch: How Artist Ian Woo Integrates Abstraction into Workplace Design.
Ian Woo studied painting in the United Kingdom, first at the Kent Institute of Art and Design and later at the Winchester School of Art, where his interest in abstraction began to take form. Music, particularly improvisation, shaped the rhythm and movement that now define his work. After returning to Singapore, he refined what he calls “picture making,” a way of painting that feels alive and constantly shifting with perception and time. That same sensitivity to rhythm and space continues to guide his practice today.
ATP.art and Ian Woo at BlackRock Singapore
When ATP.art invited Woo to contribute to the new BlackRock Singapore office, experiencing the space became essential. “I think it is important for an artist to experience the site where we are making a commissioned work for,” he said. “I really appreciate ATP for organizing the site visit.”
That visit, coordinated remotely by ATP.art in the United States and supported on the ground in Singapore, gave him the physical impression he needed before committing to the work. Seeing where the painting would eventually live offered scale, tone, proportion, and context that could not be conveyed digitally.
Fountain (2025)
Fountain (2025), installed within BlackRock’s Singapore office. Woo’s abstraction offers a quiet moment of attention inside a high-functioning workplace.
The result is Fountain (2025), an acrylic on linen painting now installed in one of the floor lounges within BlackRock’s Singapore office. The work reflects Woo’s characteristic approach to layered mark making, subtle tonal shifts, and the kind of optical balance that unfolds slowly with time. It sits in an environment where people transition throughout the day, and its presence offers a moment of quiet attention in the rhythm of movement.
The work’s layered structure and tonal balance were informed by the surrounding architecture — a response to the building’s rhythm, color, and proportion observed during the artist’s site visit.
A Practice of Seeing
Woo’s process is not built on recreating visible subjects, but on sensing how a painting forms through time in front of him. The logic of the work comes from being present with it. From painting slowly. From allowing marks to accumulate and shift until the surface feels resolved.
That is the connection between his studio and this commission. ATP.art created the pathway, the access, the site understanding, and Woo responded with the same intuitive methodology that defines his larger practice.
Fountain is a moment inside an ongoing investigation. A painting that invites viewers in a corporate setting to slow down, to look, and to spend time the same way Woo does in the studio.
Read more about the full Singapore program and watch the video below to see the entire suite of artists who contributed to BlackRock’s new office.
Film by ATP.art Media Services. Presented by Artrepreneur.
