With his latest deliberation on narrative, text, and the future, Heman Chong offers a handsome presentation of paintings, text pieces, and a found book in his new solo exhibition “Of Indeterminate Time Or Occurrence” at Singapore’s FOST Gallery. Greeting you on one wall is a series of small paintings—organized in a three-row, eleven-column grid—and opposite from them, like a kind of déjà vu, is a second set of 33 paintings. Left empty and unlit, the long space between the two walls emphasizes the paintings’ sheer numbers, technique, and execution. With each of Chong’s canvases being a viable abstract painting, and in light of his competent painterly gestures, a question arises: How does he reconcile his research-based practice, which values idea over form, with his painterly brush? In other words, how does the artist manage to have it both ways? In this exhibition, Chong intersperses paintings from the “Cover (Versions)” series (2009–ongoing)—each one featuring a book title and author’s name against an abstract background, much like a book cover—among “wordless” canvases from his newer “Things That Remain Unwritten” series (2013–ongoing). Serving as fillers or breathers, the latter canvases offer relief from the otherwise didactic text panels on view, affording us a way …