Art KL-itique

During my first visit to "Leonardo Opera Omnia" at the National Art Gallery, I was startled by the crowd in attendance. A year ago, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has staged reproductions of works by the the superior Italian painter Caravaggio , in the same Galeri 3A. The number of visitors then were the usual,  i.e. less than 10 persons in a single gallery, including tourists. Queuing up to look at La Gioconda  – whose back-lit eyes do not follow this observer – I found the atmosphere pleasantly joyful. Guided tours in Bahasa Malaysia. Observers quoting Dan Brown while comparing Virgin of the Rocks . Baffled onlookers gazing intently at da Vinci's left-handed mirror writings. Who said Malaysians are not interested in art? A different question: are these light boxes, art ?  National Art Gallery visitors in front of a back-lit life-sized reproduction of Leonardo Da Vinci – Il Cenacolo (1495–1498)  Famous Renaissance Man aside, the marketing campai...

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There were a dozen 2018 art exhibitions that I would have liked to write about in-depth. But the impetus to document observations about local visual arts has waned significantly, as my interest shifts (again) towards philosophy & aesthetics. It is fitting then, that this shift is triggered by a show itself – Games and Politics at Lostgens’ in May 2018. Organized by the Goethe-Institut, this interactive exhibition of political games, offered a level of visitor engagement that the typical contemporary artist can only yearn for. Its exhibition catalogue includes many insightful essays, which eventually led me to learn more about game mechanics & rules-modding, game designer Ian Bogost and media & cultural studies, then I ended up reading about object-oriented ontology, which then led me back to Plato’s forms, Hume’s copy, Schopenhauer's sublime, Deleuze’ differences… (my brain is fudgy now). Screenshots of games [clockwise from top-left]: Dys4ia; Orwell; Killbox; Y...

Cult Gallery organized “Halal Haram”, a fundraising show that features a stellar line-up of 26 Malaysian artists. Many exhibits resonate with the chosen theme – from Umibaizurah Mahir Ismail’s ceramic cake adorned with a skull and flowers, to Ahmad Zakii Anwar’s faceless portrait of one in heels & kebaya holding a whip, to Chong Siew Ying’s delightful painting ‘ Ceci Nest Pas Un Rambutan ’ – each work effectively draws upon a familiar image as a starting point, thereby visually triggering viewers to contemplate on social norms. Striking also is ‘Kipas’ by Yee I-Lann, a bamboo weave made together with Julitah binti Kulinting, that features a cultural motif, paired with a flat black silhouette. One imagines the lively yet serious atmosphere while the weaving is worked on, underneath the breeze of a creaking ceiling fan, where the winds of change follows the rhythm of community. A rump in the lull , hah… A post shared by Cult Gallery (@cult_gallery) on Nov 17, 2018 at 1...

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 s...

For his third solo exhibition, Sean Lean utilizes a presentation format – the triptych – as a starting point to explore subject matters in painting. The exhibition statement describes the triptych as “a pictorial convention within the Christian tradition where a central panel is adjoined by two subsidiary but associated ones…” In a concise and descriptive essay, Line Dalile writes that the artist “…sought to challenge and disrupt its inherent symmetry. Size, style, and treatment of individual panels vary in attempt to create a space of tension and ambiguity, yet still maintain a unifying line of thought, both visually and conceptually, between the three panels in each triptych. Tension is inherently built into the format of the triptych, with each individual panel vying for attention or complementing and illuminating the other, if not both.” 3 (2018) Case in point: ‘3’, with its left panel a trippy combination of overlapping pink, blue, and yellow circles; the alphabets ‘T’...