Art KL-itique

Stepping foot into PAM Centre’s lobby, one encounters broken bricks painted in black , where few pieces stand upon pedestals among its dense arrangement. The horizontal layout denotes a building plan (or an urban sprawl), while its vertical structures raise the visitor’s eyes to a background with two monochromatic paintings hanging on a concrete wall, where square apertures function as windows. For those unfamiliar with Ajim Juxta, the exhibition title states explicitly the artist’s concerns. “TUGU|UGUT” illustrates a disdain for built monuments and dominance hierarchies, yet its wordplay denotes too the conceptual limits of the artist’s expressions. Looking at charcoal-like objects clustered on the floor level, I imagined a thumping bassline to accompany these impressions of detritus, and wondered if moss would grow on these bricks as time passes.  Installation snapshot on the ground floor: (2018) [foreground] Datar; [background, l-r] Tugu: Kubu; Tugu: Menara It is a surpr