Eleven years ago, two gay guys met up in Los Angeles and paid a visit to the Museum of Contemporary Art.
They stopped in front of a painting called “Desk Calendar”, by Roy Lichtenstein. One guy – a Frenchman we’ll call Gabriel – was already a big Lichtenstein fan, so he was pretty psyched when he saw that the calendar in the piece was open on the date of his birth, 21 May 1962.
Then the other guy, a Singaporean we’ll call Moonbeam, screamed. He’d noticed that one date, and only one date was circled in the corner of the work: 26 October – his birthday.
“We were obviously quite startled and elated,” recalls Gabriel. “Completely the same way I would have felt if I’d won a big lottery. The feeling of something really extraordinary that will change your life.”
For him, that coincidence – no, not a coincidence, he insists, but a miraculous event – was proof that the two of them were intended for each other, as decreed by some mysterious force of destiny. Since that day, he’s repeated the story to endless friends, trying to find a way to properly chronicle the key events that led to the blossoming of their relationship.
Now, his efforts have finally come to fruit with the opening of Fairy Tales, an art exhibition at the Opera Gallery in ION Orchard. It’ll be on from 26 March to 22 April, with free admission for all.
The works on display are selections from the MaGMA Collection, a private collection of top-notch contemporary Chinese and Southeast Asian art, assembled by Gabriel and Moonbeam over the years of their relationship together. There are world-famous names in here, such Chinese art superstars Zeng Fanzhi, Zhang Xiaogang and Yue Minjun, as well as prominent Singaporean practitioners David Chan and Justin Lee.
What’s special is how each work has been recontextualised so that it forms part of the story of Gabriel and Moonbeam’s romance. Paintings have been reframed into metal diptychs by Jean-Francois Milou, the chief architect behind the upcoming National Art Gallery. Images are accompanied by textual passages, standing on the ground like hardcover storybooks to be discovered by viewers.
”We’ve been touched by MaGMA’s miraculous story, and of course by the quality of this lovingly assembled collection which has never been exhibited before,” says Stéphane Le Pelletier, the director of the Asia-Pacific branch of the Opera Gallery, who’s allowed the couple to exhibit their collection free of charge.
As for myself, I’m a bit of cynic when it comes to romance. But I’m rather touched too. Singapore is a city that builds monuments to progress and prosperity: we have very few monuments to love, gay or straight, such as this.
Gabriel, of course, is a hopeless romantic. “There was no such thing as a one-night-stand in my life; it had to be Prince Charming forever. So of course I had a number of disappointments. But when I finally met Moonbeam it all kind of made sense. I felt without all the experience of other long term relationships I don’t think I would have been able to appreciate how perfect he is for me.”
The two first met in July 1999, in a bar in Tanjong Pagar. (Interestingly enough, both were early investors in Fridae.) Currently, they’re in a civil union, administered in the French embassy in Singapore and celebrated with a grand reception at the Botanical Gardens.
Nor was LA the only place they had a magical moment. A few months later, while in Sydney for Mardi Gras, they stopped by a shop window in Oxford Street. There lay a pile of videos of The Wedding Banquet, an iconic gay Taiwanese film from 1993. Gabriel suddenly noted the name of one of the lead actors: Mitchell Lichtenstein, the son of the painter Roy.
“This time it hits me,” he says. “And I hear a voice in the back of my head: ‘The painting, I did it for you.’” He was convinced he’d heard the ghost of Roy Lichtenstein (though Moonbeam suggested it might have been the result of partying too much the night before).
Then the next day, in Paddington Square, he experienced a flash of divine, blue-white light. This stunned him enough that he considered getting a baptism. In the end, he returned to his Jewish roots, studying Hebrew and finally doing his bar mitzvah (a Jewish religious ritual commemorating the religious adulthood of a boy on his 13th birthday), performed 26 years late.
Over the years, he’s intently investigated the life of Roy Lichtenstein and the history of the painting. He’s befriended former owners of “Desk Calendar”, as well as Lichtenstein’s widow Dorothy and Mitchell himself, an openly gay man who’s found fame as the director of the 2007 horror film, Teeth. Now in his fifties, Mitchell’s shared that his dad was completely accepting of his orientation while alive.
Gabriel hasn’t yet managed to uncover the mystery of why he and his lover’s birthdates appear on the painting. However, he understands the power of his story as evidence for the miracle of love. In fact, Fairy Tales is in part a translation of the French title, Contes des fees/Comptes des faits, which can also mean “an account of facts”.
It’s for this reason that he wants people to see the exhibition, not just in Singapore, but also abroad, if it has the chance to travel. Additionally, he’s set up a Facebook Group where people can add to the dialogue – just search for MaGMA.sg.
“Our purpose is to share the story, and to encourage new access to art, to encourage the public to share their own stories of magic in their lives,” he says.
Go join up and see the art show. We can’t promise you a life-changing miracle, but who knows? Stranger things have happened.
Find out more about MaGMA (http://magma.sg) and visit Fairy Tales at the Opera Gallery, ION Orchard #03-05, from the 26 March to 22 April 2010.