The Singapore Masters Show 2026

Opera Gallery is pleased to present 'The Singapore Masters Show 2026', an exhibition bringing together more than thirty works by some of the most significant artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. Sound curator Julian Casablancas, frontman of The Strokes, has curated playlists that accompany the show, reflecting the creative and cultural zeitgeist surrounding major art movements.

Rather than drawing direct parallels between artists and musical genres, the exhibition explores the shared ideas and cultural contexts that have shaped visual art and music. Sound operates not as accompaniment but as a curatorial medium, offering a new lens through which to experience the masters of modern and contemporary art.

The presentation unfolds across four immersive chapters inspired by spaces of musical creation: the Classical Recital Room, the Jazz Club, the Recording Studio, and the Stage.

• Classical Recital Room evokes intimacy and contemplation through the traditions of the recital as a space for close listening and reflection. Featuring Marc Chagall, Raoul Dufy and Pierre Soulages, this environment explores lyricism, rhythm and poetic expression.

🎶 Music selected by Julian Casablancas:

Richard Wagner - Tristan und Isolde: Prelude 
Claude Debussy - Claire de Lune
Claude Debussy - La fille aux cheveux de lin
Sergei Rachmaninoff - Prelude in C Sharp Minor (Op. 3 No. 2)
Chopin - Nocturne Op. 27 No. 2 (played by Arthur Rubinstein)

• Jazz Club celebrates improvisation, spontaneity and expressive gesture through gestural abstraction, Art Informel and Neo-Expressionism. Works by Willem de Kooning, Jean Paul Riopelle and A.R. Penck foreground experimentation and the dynamic process of artistic creation.

🎶 Music selected by Julian Casablancas:

Charlie Parker - Savoy Album S-510 B 
Miles Davis - Concierto de Aranjuez: Adagio
Hal Galper - Call

• Recording Studio examines the studio as a site of invention and continual reinvention. Bringing together works by Richard Prince, Alexander Calder, Roy Lichtenstein and Pablo Picasso, it explores how artists developed new visual languages through innovation, material exploration and formal experimentation.

🎶 Music selected by Julian Casablancas:

Art Zoyd - Experiences Vol. 3
Julián Carillo - Misa a S. Juan XXIII en cuartos de tono

• The Stage investigates spectacle, celebrity and the construction of cultural identity through works by Andy Warhol, Banksy, George Condo and Yayoi Kusama. Here, art intersects with popular culture and mass media, examining how images circulate, perform and acquire cultural influence.

🎶 Music selected by Julian Casablancas:

Elvis Presley - The Girl of My Best Friend
Mark Bernes - Dark Night 
Madonna - Like a Virgin
The Velvet Underground - I Found a Reason 
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five (ft. Melle Mel & Dike Bootee) - The Message 
CMJ - 氤氲之森
Van Halen - Jump 
Lou Reed - Walk on the Wild Side 

"I find it interesting (and hard to predict) what will be combustable when pairing visuals with music. Hi, I'm Julian Casablancas, international person of musical pertinence. Come dream with me.

 

Like a chef pairing wines with a delicate elk casserole or a filet of sweet lamb, my goal was to bring out the "classifications" of the paintings they shared with me.

 

For the 'Mass Consumption' (The Stage Room) - I thought of the happy excitements of progress and new horizons - mixed with the pained anxiety of modern existence, and with an oaky finish of a sad essence of "'50s Nostalgia."

 

For the 'Experimental’ (Recording Studio Room) I chose my beloved freak-faves.

 

'Classical' (Classical Recital Room) was more straightforward; I just leaned on the musical pieces that gave me the feeling the paintings were coming to life and attacking me with their secret stories and subtle details, exploiting my psyche in ways they didn't without the music.

 

'Jazz' (Jazz Club Room) was the easiest in a way cause I felt the eras matched so well. The cutting-edgeness was parallel, as well as the iconic universal comfort it still exudes - even tho being so old now - while feeling so new and revolutionary when it came out." — JULIAN CASABLANCAS 

This exhibition is supported by: