Audemars Piguet brings traveling exhibit to Singapore

SINGAPORE –– Last stop: the abandoned Tanjong Pagar Railway Station, formerly a gateway to Malaysia and now reserved as the Singapore Railway Museum. The art deco-style building, its exterior bearing marble reliefs by sculptor and architect Rudolfo Nolli, was opened in 1923 and closed in July 2011. It was here that Audemars Piguet’s “Royal Oak: 40 Years from Avant-Garde to Icon” exhibition, already witnessed in New York, Milan, Paris and Beijing, was launched last Oct. 9.

The remains of the railway station housed the exhibition in an environment unlike the rest of cosmopolitan Singapore. Its crumbling, chipped walls still holding paintings of rustic scenes from the city’s more rural beginnings were a stark contrast to the exhibit’s contemporary swagger, adding a sense of history befitting the star of the show: an assembly of 100 Audemars Piguet Royal Oak timepieces created since 1972.

The museum carried pieces from vanguard installation and sound artist Sébastien Léon Agneessens, video artist Quayola and photographer Dan Holdsworth. The exhibit was anchored on Agneessens’ “Fragments,” a massive metallic rock typically found in Valleé de Joux, broken into six pieces that allude to the Royal Oak’s material, angles and the spirit of family that has carried the Audemars name. Meanwhile. His multi-channel sound installations, tall pipes made of brushed steel to mimic the Royal Oak’s finish, provide what one can’t really categorically call “ambient music” but does the job nonetheless. Stand in between the jagged platforms and you’ll feel like the genie of the Royal Oak, enveloped in an intricate symphony of tick-tocks and chimes.

Landscape photographer Dan Holdsworth’s time-lapse triptychs of the Vallée de Joux are dreamy depictions of its terrain as well as its almost cosmic relation to time. He captures the valley’s glacial topography and ancient landscapes in way that mimics the exhibition’s display of Audemars Piguet timepieces –– surreal landscape of steel trees and angular metal earth. Davide Quayola, a visual artist based in London, created a piece that was photograph, digital sculpture and audio-visual installation in one. His work, “Matter,” documents the passing of time through the transformation of his subject, which is Rodin’s “The Thinker,” rethought. Curated by Agneesens, the three works together tell the story of Audemars Piguet’s most iconic and innovative timepiece, the Royal Oak, displaying its evolution over 100 different models created over the last 40 years.

The ‘70s witnessed a shocking turn in watchmaking when Audemars Piguet launched the Royal Oak –– a stainless-steel luxury watch in an era when gold was considered the only high-end option. It’s been 40 years since the first Royal Oak was created and critiqued as being too innovative and the base of the watch remains exactly as it was. “You don’t change perfection,” said Audemars Piguet’s CEO ad interim Francois-Henry Bennahmias. AP watches have become a lot more popular with the accomplished younger set, who are a good 10 years younger than the average high-end watch buyer. “Jay-Z, who has around 40 Audemars Piguets, started rapping about AP, that’s when we really hit the younger market. These are self-made achievers who like to reward themselves. “Forty years from now, we want a 20-year-old to say, ‘Yeah, this watch makes sense in this world today,’” said Bennahmias.

As part of the celebration, the newly-launched limited edition Royal Oak Leo Messi Chronograph case no. 10 in platinum and tantalum was also displayed for the first time in Singapore and was also part of an auction with proceeds set to go to the Leo Messi Foundation, along with The Royal Oak Grande Complication, created in 1998 for Guy Laliberté, founder of Cirque du Soleil, and the Royal Oak Concept, which is an avant-garde tribute to the Royal Oak’s 30th year.

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Audemars Piguet is exclusively distributed in the Philippines by Lucerne, with shops at Greenbelt 5 and Shangri-La Plaza Mall. For more information, visit audemarspiguet.com.

Text and photos by CHONX TIBAJIA