Crooks’ work tests the new paradigms of space, time and vision forged by our ubiquitous digital image technologies. In 2011, he captivated Singaporean audiences with his piece Static No.12 (Seek Stillness in Movement), a mesmerising study of an elderly Tai Chi practitioner in a Shanghai park. For this piece, the artist was honoured with the APB Foundation Signature Art Prize, Juror’s Choice Award. More recently, he took out the digital/video prize at the inaugural Prudential Eye Awards (2014).Recalling the experimental origins of the moving image – the so-called ‘chronophotography’ of the 19th century – Crook’s beguiling compositions explore the fundamentals of human perception. In his celebrated ‘time slice’ series, begun in 1999, he extracts thin slices of moving images and rearranges them, altering the relationship between space and time.

Crooks’ work gives the digital image a new elasticity, employing techniques of angle variation, light diffusion and chromatic patterning to effect uncanny and intriguing mutations of the visible world. His videos reveal its unseen rhythms and patterns; time becomes a spatial, plastic dimension, something that can be moulded and transformed.

For Crooks, the frantic pace of contemporary life gives rise to a new experience of time. Inspired by the bustling metropolises of Asia, he is drawn to diametrically opposed subjects, from high-speed trains to solitary drifters, amid the urban chaos. These intense contrasts expand the gaps between ephemeral moments, amplifying the echoes of human presence in everyday social life.