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Showing posts from 2017

Snippets: Q4 2017

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Organized by the artist’s family, a collection of 100+ sketches and paintings by Chia Yu Chian are cramped into a first-floor room at the Kuala Lumpur and Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall. Among figure studies, still life oil paintings, city scenes, and commissioned works tagged onto billboards in the narrow aisles, the quality on show is mixed. For every derivative impression, there is a delightful element, be it a forceful figurative gesture or a swirling impasto. His son reveals , “(e)ven during the times he was admitted to hospital, he would go around and sketch scenes of life in the hospital…” These paintings are incidentally the best works on show, as Yu Chian documents moments of human empathy and humdrum companionship. The older accompanying sketch indicates his strong composition skills, while suggesting also the artist’s painting method and its prominent use of outlines. Chia Yu Chian – Attended to the Patient [left sketch 1977; right oil painting 1980] Malaysian Art

December 2017: R&G Body Template in A Room

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The human body, is the focus of three exhibitions held in the same month, at three independent art spaces. Organized by The F Klub, “Figure in the Room” at HOM Art Trans features a younger line-up of figurative painters, whose tiresome works flaunt individual styles and offer little unique perspectives in depicting/viewing the figure. The collective’s original members, however, do better – Shia Yih Yiing’s literal play on figure-ground relationship draws this viewer to note the size differences in perceived body parts, while one lounging body illustrated by Kow Leong Kiang resembles a copper sculpture in colour tone, yet its figure is soften by the brushy oil paint of the bed sheets. How many of these realistic figures , were depicted based on photographic portraits? Shia Yih Yiing - Good afternoon! (2017) At Minut Init Art Social, life drawing is the starting point for the exhibits at “The Enactivist Body Template” . Nudity prevails, but most depictions of the human figure

Dash @ Five Arts Centre, 22 September 2017

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With beads of sweat covering his forehead roughly two-thirds into his 55-minutes performance, Ho Rui An’s voice starts to quiver. Despite taking sips of water throughout his narration, sitting in front of a projector screen underneath bright lights, is obviously an onerous act. Signs of physical toll provide the finishing touch to a coruscating account that started with a car crash, then zooming past topics such as the rich foreigner, moving at speed, horizon scanning, the Kobayashi Maru , scenario planning, Centre for Strategic Futures, the Black Swan , shamanistic symbols, Marina Bay Sands, economic development, sentiment analysis, luck & trauma, weak signals , then settling back to the dashcam video recording one sitting behind a car’s dashboard. “Horizon Scanners”, talk by Ho Rui An where a number of topics are also covered in ‘Dash’ [video from Asia Contemporary Art Week (ACAW) YouTube channel] Donned in black with a wireless headset, Rui An adopts the presentatio

KL Biennale (II): The Gift of Knowledge

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“What's so interesting about Durai Singam? Durai Singam (1904 – 1995) was no ordinary secondary school teacher who once taught in Kuantan. He also became one of the world's most obsessive bibliographers and collectors of memorabilia related to the world prominent philosopher and historian of Indian art, the late Ananda Kentish Muthu Coomaraswamy (1877 – 1947). (…) A selection of his editorial layouts using collage as a compositional technique are on display in this exhibition. This selection provides the viewer with a sense of the hands-on DIY nature of Durai Singam's by turns whimsical, high-minded, and idiosyncratic approach to publishing. In a sense, Durai Singam pursued this work as if it were his karma or sacred duty to disseminate this knowledge for posterity.” – Snippets from Visual Art Program, Cultural Centre, University of Malaya Facebook page, in a post dated 17th November 2017 Installation snapshot At the end of these long introductory paragraphs, i

Snippets: September 2017

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Museum hopping in Singapore might become an annual family affair, given the international superstars the nation-state draws to their pristine shores. While the kid runs wild at teamLab’s interactive “Future World” exhibition at ArtScience Museum, I appreciate the fascinating collection of technology-meet-real world exhibits in “HUMAN+”. The highlight of the trip is undoubtedly the long queues to get into the galleries and infinity rooms for Yayoi Kusama’s “Life Is the Heart of A Rainbow”. Visual gimmicks and the solace/trauma of repetition aside, Yayoi’s fabric phalli constructs and large black-and-white drawings stand out to this visitor, for its concerted effort in failing to figuratively depict a representation. As a visitor sums up at the start of her review , “Kusama’s art is far from happy, despite its bright hues.” Indeed, “she’s way more than just a photo op.”  Snapshot of Yayoi Kusama – Love Forever series After attending the gut-wrenching “Art AIDS America” exhib

To You I Surrender My Vanity @ Suma Orientalis

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The Christian ring to the exhibition title is deliberate – Eng Hwee Chu’s devotion to her religion and family, are clearly on display in her art. Consisting of signature acrylic paintings, preparatory sketches, watercolours & pastels, and charcoal & graphite drawings, this collection of works provides a satisfying look-through at the 50-years old’s career. Entering the new bungalow-cum-gallery space, the visitor is greeted by two paintings from the “Black Moon” series made in the early 1990s. The crimson figure and its corresponding shadow, wavy landscape as background, gestures of anguish and cynicism, are all hallmarks in Hwee Chu’s subsequent output. Her more recent works on display suggest an increasingly confident and still-evolving artist.  Victims of Struggling Live (2017) The exhibition statement describes well a typical painting by Hwee Chu – “(s)he casts her doppelgänger self and others close to her into her paintings, lingering them onto the canvas surroun

KL Biennale 2017 (I): Under Construction

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After two visits to Balai Seni Negara, and one sojourn at Universiti Malaya's Piyadasa Gallery, there is much to ponder about the inaugural Kuala Lumpur Biennale. Beyond the initial disappointment of navigating a terrible website, arriving at empty galleries and a broken elevator, I have since encountered thoughtful installations and great individual artworks, and a couple effective arrangements befitting its cheesy theme. It is unfortunate, yet unsurprising, that the first note on this five-months event is about (self)-censorship. One day before its official opening, news portal The Malaysian Insight reports that Aisyah Baharuddin has chosen to cover 'Under Construction' in black netting, due to the removal of certain components in her (and her collaborators') installation by authorities . A police investigation pertaining to this matter is ongoing.  Installation snapshot (taken on 17th November 2017) Occupying a long floor space on the second floor, visi

M @ A+ WORKS of ART

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“M” recalls ‘M’, a memorable work by Tan Zi Hao I last saw three years ago. The found-object aesthetic extends to shop signs hung here, where a pawnbroker’s signage – with its four languages and prominently circled 當 ideogram – greets the gallery visitor. Shown next is a paperback Susur Galur Bahasa Melayu by eminent linguistics scholar Asmah Haji Omar, placed before three similar book covers where the words “Bahasa Melayu” is translated into Chinese, then Jawi, then “Bahasa Malaysia”. The Chinese rendition is beguiling; While “Bahasa 巴哈薩” gets a direct phonetic translation, the rendering “Melayu 巫來由” now implies “Malay origins”, due to the process of translating Latin alphabets into monosyllable Chinese characters. Although illegible, the Jawi translation reminds me of the Arabic script adapted to write the Malay language, when Islam arrived at this region in the 12th century. “M” for mortgage? Exhibition snapshot at gallery entrance Therein lies the theme explored in the

This Is Where We Meet @ OUR ArtProjects

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As large surveys featuring Malaysian modern art are under way in two KL institutions, this r elatively small exhibition stands out as a significant complement, to one’s understanding about abstraction in Malaysian art. Lee Mok Yee’s creations highlight its medium’s inherent properties, although the pattern-dominated wall hangings attenuate the transformative effect, of utilising materials such as wood cork and incense to make art. Conversely, my attention was chiefly absorbed with ten paintings by Liew Kwai Fei, whose exhibits hardly resemble the artist’s recent output featuring waggish characters or painted texts. My deliberation of these paintings is influenced too by John Yau, whose reviews of New York gallery exhibitions I find fascinating, where the writer’s detailed descriptions of painted surfaces and poetic recount of its visual impact are remarkable. Liew Kwai Fei - The Art of Painting (2017) Indistinguishably titled ‘The Art of Painting’, each acrylic painting i

Thirty Pieces of Silver @ Wei-Ling Gallery

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Walking past antique furniture then ascending a flight of stairs into the gallery, one is greeted by 45 glass plate photographs made with early photographic processes. Encased in black frames and leather folders, these pictures are relatively tiny as compared to contemporary art photography, yet the images’ shiny surface and dark-on-dark presentation evoke an irresistible aura. The exhibition wall text describes K. Azril Ismail’s creations and salutes historical figures, “(t)hese pictures are hand-crafted, one of a kind, image-objects, with the lending hands of the great giants of photographic pioneers: Louis Daguerre, William Henry Fox Talbot, and Frederick Scott Archer, alongside with (John) Herschel, (Thomas) Wedgwood, (Carl Wilhelm) Scheele, (Humphry) Davy, (Nicéphore) Niépce, and (Hippolyte) Bayard.” Skull, Warrior, Bird and Guide Book (Table Study) (2012) [picture from weiling-gallery.com] With reference to the four photographic processes employed here, Wikipedia infor