Nathan Yong's stainless steel designs investigate art, industrial design, and social dysfunction

Prized for its durability, low maintenance and pliability, stainless steel may be a ubiquitous material; but in the hands of Nathan Yong, it becomes a thoughtful metaphor for cultural identity and social displacement.

Coinciding with this year’s edition of Singapore Design Week, ‘Being and Nothingness - A Discourse on Identity’ is the Singaporean designer’s latest salvo in a career-long investigation into the prickly relationship between art, industrial design, and social dysfunction.

Nathan Yong’s ‘Being and Nothingness - A Discourse on Identity’

Yong wanted to work with stainless steel precisely because of its ubiquity as a building material in Singapore. ‘We use it as sidewalk rails. It’s in our MRT subway stations and even in our hawker centres,’ he says, explaining that urban planners prize the material for its efficiency, colour-neutrality and ability to withstand scratches and stains.

It belatedly occurred to Yong – who counts Donald Judd and Dan Flavin as design polestars – that these same qualities are to be found within the Singaporean psyche; he points out, half joking, that ‘we are clean, efficient, easy to maintain, and able to gel with our surroundings. In fact, we are a society that has modernised at fast speed. I feel that this has resulted in a loss of individuality.’

Out of this observation was born the current collection of home furniture. Comprising 11 quotidian pieces ranging from a sofa, a standing screen and a vase to a lounger, a chair and a bar stool – each constructed of mirror-polished Grade 304 stainless steel – ‘Being and Nothingness’ is superbly tactile in its combination of rectilinear and curved lines; familiar in the silhouette, while a little alien in expression.

‘What interests me here is the interplay between the reflective qualities of stainless steel and its inherent lack of warmth, and how, in turn, that challenges us to look for a balance between efficiency and human connection, between order and individuality.’

Interestingly, Yong says that while his intention was to dissect the bland homogenisation of a culture, the process of creating the collection was tricky and nuanced. Working with a family of metalsmiths in northern Malaysia, the immediate challenge was to find the right thickness so that the sheets were structurally strong and not flimsy, yet retained a visual lightness. These then had to be painstakingly ground to create the welding joints, before each completed piece was finally hand-polished to a mirrored finish.

Beyond being fascinating objets de la maison, Yong – who is currently working on a new home brand called Nathan Home – hopes his new collection invites a degree of introspection, especially in the context of the material’s public urban provenance, latterly transplanted into the private space of a home. ‘A chair becomes inviting and chilling at the same time,’ he says, thinking, perhaps, of the tubular, beautifully awkward chair, ‘Article no. 1’.

Whether the average furniture aficionado will quite reach the level of introspection about a chair or bar stool that Yong demands – even one as rigorously designed as his is – remains to be seen, but if nothing else, you’d be sitting pretty in the process.

‘Nothingness – A Discourse on Identity’ is showing at Art Commune Gallery until 16 October 2024, www.artcommune.com.sg. The collection is also available for sale at the gallery, in limited editions of one, three, five, eight and ten pieces. Prices start from S$7,000. www.nathanyongdesign.com