Created especially for the fair where they will be exhibited for the first time, Forest of Stones is a series of sculptures inspired by ancient Chinese stone stele. Dating back to the Tang dynasty, steles are rectangular stone tablets inscribed with calligraphy, classics, or poetry, and were erected as commemorative monuments.

Leong’s sculptures are monuments to the artistic cycle of creation and destruction. He uses personal mythologies to describe creation and obliteration of the self, through intensive artistic processes of casting, destroying, assembling and recasting.

The rectangular form of the stele is blended with casts of the artist’s own head and everyday objects such as ginger, crystals, rocks and other natural forms. Created with an aggregate of concrete, marble dust and rose quartz inclusions, these works reference the passing of time.They embody a space between the past and present, between the self and world.