ra fine arts collage show – intimately alien

Dadaism, surrealism, montages, collages. Anti-art, anti-establishment. Anything goes. I just stepped into a labyrinth of confused and disturbed young minds. I am glad to see more works that chronicle the artist own personal thoughts and experience rather than trying too hard to be a social or political activist. Looking inwards sometimes can be more interesting than looking outwards.

Excellent use of gearwheels, circuit board, copper wires and other electrical components. A well executed collage of illustration prints and 3d objects.

Haslin’s disturbed mind. Great imagination. Well executed work.

Minimalist masks from Elias. Transforming everyday object to art.

The great illustrator, meme. His characters always look strangely familiar to me. Lacking the originality I expect.

This work by Rini Fauzan (Unisel lecturer), EQA 1974 is my favourite. The green cover book still sits on my bookshelf just a few feet away from my study table. 13 years now. A collage done as a animation displayed on LCD tv. A car battery look-alike thing with flapping wings carrying a cloud of industrial pollution. The red “E” I assumed is indication for running out of power. It looks like a perpectual machine that will never run out of fuel but always with the fuel level at the warning level. DOE should buy this work and put it at the lobby of their department as a self-critical statement to remind the staffs of their roles in implementing the act.

Awas (on the left) by Hushinaidi. A half submerged crocodile guarding the twin tower.

Hujan by Tan Hui Koon. Photograph with cut out trees and a painted colourful shower head, raining a ghostly figure? I would love to see more of this.

Aamusing little works from Izmir.

More minimalist work from Elias.

Haslin’s creature with a blank stare. Lovely.

jangan jadi anak kurang ajar

This was taken at an abandoned apartment building at the reclaimed pulau melaka. The mother cat has been incessantly calling for her two naughty kitten to go home. Yet the two kittens continued to play on the beach.

common ground

I was looking for a space where there is no burden of tradition and culture, a secular space. And there it was: A children’s playground. We have such an obsession with our heritage, ancestral lineage, ethnic identity and culture. We are taught to see differences, to categories, to separate, to tolerate, and most important of all, to never become one of them. We fear homogenization. In my opinion, it is important to maintain a set of  common ideals, common political institutions, common language, and common culture that can bond everyone together. As I see it, this playground transcends ethnicity, culture and religion. At this place, there is only humanity.

failure to photograph reality

This is the work of Duane Michals called “A Failed Attempt to Photograph Reality”, 1975.  The script was presented as a gelatin silver print.

“how foolish of me to believe that it would be that easy. I had confused the appearance of trees and automobile, and people with reality itself, and believed that a photograph of these appearances to me a photograph of it. It is a melancholy truth that I will never be able to photograph it and can ony fail. I am a reflection of photographing other reflections within a reflection. To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.”

“It is no accident that you are reading this. I am making black marks on white paper. These marks are my thoughts, and although I do not know who you are reading this now, in some way the lines of our lives have intersected… For the length of these few sentences, we meet here.

It is no accident that you are reading this. This moment has been waiting for you, I have been waiting for you. Remember me.”

Most of his photographs were presented in sequence. Here is one taken from New York Magazine 14 Sep 1992.

He said, “I want to know what time is, not what a clock looks like.” Perhaps he’s done it. Nobody can photograph his own thoughts better.

contemporary international artist 2009

now, that’s a pretty awful translation printed on the catalogue of the short one-week exhibition held at the SGM Gallery at Bukit Bintang. I think the more appropriate translation would be an exhibition of renowned international contemporary chinese ink painting and caligraphy. of course the ‘international’ is abit exagerated since there are only three artists: two from china and one from malaysia. Nonetheless, the two from china, Dr. Chen ChuanXi and Feng JunHu are no doubt famous characters in China. Dr.Chen is a professor from the Renmin University of China. Feng JunHu is an expert in “cao shu”(one type of caligraphy style) caligraphy from China. And our Malaysian ink painter and caligrapher Dr.Cheah is wellknown locally. When put side by side, it is very obvious the difference between a traditional chinese painter from china and a rather modernised version of chinese ink painting.

The one on top is by Dr.Chen from China and the bottom one is by Dr.Cheah from Malaysia. If we do measure the worth and reputation of the painting by its price, the one by Dr.Chen is priced at a value ten fold of Dr.Cheah’s painting. That’s the reality of the art market. Dr.Chen is no doubt a great historian and have written many books on the art history in china. He’s also a great advocate for the arts to be rooted in culture and ancestral lineage. And thus, he used to suggest that chinese ink painting can only be done well by a chinese (from china) being brought up by chinese education system, within the china’s philosophical and religious millieu. He is always very critical about young contemporary chinese artists who followed the western art tradition. “外国人拿毛笔肯定写不过中国人”, he quoted (Foreigners holding a brush can never write better than a chinese). So, I’m glad to read what he wrote for Dr.Cheah during this visit: “看了谢恭宋博士的书画后，使我大为吃惊，因为我一向认为研究创作水墨画，在海外是无法和中国本土画家相比的…但谢恭宋博士的画所具有的中国传统是真正的传统，不是徒有其表的。” (After seeing Dr.Cheah’s painting, I am utterly surprised. Because I always thought that studying ink painting, foreigners can never be as good as local chinese in china… however, Dr.Cheah’s painting incorporated the real chinese tradition, not only superficial.)

Feng Junhu’s caligraphy is another matter. I personally don’t like ‘cao shu’ since I can only read like 10 percent of what is written most of the time. Still, it the best way to illustrate the versatility of the chinese characters. No other languages in this world can be this beautiful when written.

So I spent the sunday afternoon watching Dr.Cheah painting some works at SGM. Quite an experience. In the short period, millions of ringgit worth of paintings came and went, bought and sold. It just seems like a world of its own. The next day, I was at the last day of the 5th Museum Curators’ conference at the Annexe Gallery. The exhibition at SGM just seems so irrelevant now. A group of young curators rambling along with not direction. This is the english speaking art community. And of course we have the malay speaking crowd as well somewhere out there. Will these three group ever get to come together anyway?

not all billboard message is junk

This picture is taken from <<http://i528.photobucket.com/albums/dd330/TotoKatt/Billboard4_edited.jpg>> from the blog of http://jewishatheist.blogspot.com/2008/11/atheist-advertising-coming-to.html. “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone”. Will this advert ever appear in Malaysia landscape? The parliament will have to vote to take out the first line in our rukun negara first.

strange missing packets

Finally back online. It has been a strange past two weeks I couldn’t access my blog using my home’s ISP, time dotnet. Browsing other wordpress blogs were perfectly fine. I just cannot load my blog at home. I wasn’t too occupy with it since I’m not in the mood to write anything. Anyway, a simple traceroute found my ip packets to my blog were swallowed up by one of the time dotnet router, unable to pass through it. How strange. A call to the customer service fixed the problem. Still waiting to see what is their explanation.

opening soon

more books…

It is sad to find out that paylessbook is closing. They are having their clearance sales at Millenium square, section 14 PJ today. I forgot to read carefully the direction map provided in the ad. It took me a few lucky turns around the area to find the building. I love secondhand bookstore. The possibilities of finding something unexpected, or perhaps expected are equally exciting. The start is very slow. A lot of uninteresting books. My experience told me to go through the piles carefully. There is always something unexpected snuggled up among the scraps.

Thing was looking pretty down until I found this little book. This little phrase book teaches you the cat’s vocabulary in french. Such as, Je n’aime pas le porte-chat, Je faim, Le canape, Le moment est venu de changer la litiere, Je miaule, etc. Each comes with great illustration by Gary Zamchick. A wonderful little book.

Here’s another little book, 100 flowers by Georgio O’keeffe, the wife to the renowned photographer Alfred Stieglitz. “If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small.” – O’keeffe.  Perhaps this little book will let us see what she saw.

This is the ultimate find today. Beaumont Newhall’s history of photography. I have been looking for this book but couldn’t find it in bookstores. And there it was. I couldn’t believe my eyes. A 1964 version. The black and white prints reproduction in the book are excellent. A very satisfying find. Rm5 well spent.

Lecture on chinese ink painting appreciation

Dr.Cheah Thien Soong, an experienced Malaysian ink painter, teacher, and curator, gave an introductory lecture on the appreciation of ink paintings at Pinweizai Gallery in Kota Kemuning on Tuesday. It is a rare occasion to attend a lecture on art appreciation in malaysia. We have very little concerns for art appreciation here. Not that we don’t know the importance of it. And it is also not that we ignore it entirely. Many writers have lamented on the lack of critical discourse in local art for many decades. Still, we are, afterall, demure and modest asians with our manners. We don’t want to upset any artist by pointing out any faults of any particular works. If the artist is gracious enough to take the criticism, we often call it ‘constructive criticism’. Otherwise, any ‘constructive criticism’ will also become personal slander with malicious intent. so, artists would rather bury their head in making paintings than discussing anything that may offend any colleagues. And thus, everywhere we go, we keep some vocabulary of politically correct complements in our bag to distribute during art shows. That’s the way to survive here.

A proper discourse on art appreciation in general is hard enough to find, it is even more invaluable to have a talk on chinese ink painting. Dr.Cheah is no stranger to giving lectures on art. A very approachable and cheerful teacher, he can dispense an encyclopedic knowledge of chinese history and art philosophy as long as you have the ear for it. He was teaching in the Malaysia Institute of Art for 12 years before retiring in 2002. Heading the program for caligraphy and ink painting in the school, he has produced many successful students under his guidance. He’s now the president of Caotangmen society for eastern art research and constantly organising and supporting activities promoting art and culture in the country. One grievance i have is that most of such activities are only available to chinese speaking community. Yes, the lecture is in mandarin. Though, I’m glad that I manage to convince a malay artist friend to come along as well. It is a torture to translate the essense of his lecture to english. Still, the aesthetics in ink painting is very universal. Apart from dr.Cheah who are very eagar to share with my friend his passion for ink painting(with his limited vocabulary of bahasa), the rest of the chinese crowd are less enthusiastic. I cant’ help feeling that there is still this barrier of ethnic difference standing between chinese and malay, even in art. One of them remarked to me in mandarin before he left, that I should help them (as in malays) to expose to other cultures as they are very self-absorved in their own culture and religion. I felt a bit embarrassed but manage to force an agreeable smile back.

The audience for the lecture was pretty small, just over some 10 people. Dr.Cheah intended to have it small and contacted only close circle of friends. The lecture took about 1.5 hour including impromtu critiques of some works in the gallery. Although short, but the structure of the content did manage to cover the essential knowledge for appreciating ink painting. Let me just recap here what was mentioned in brief. The first is the aesthetic roots of chinese culture. These include the three major philosophical concepts in chinese history: Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Daoism focuses on maintaining a harmoneous relationship with everything in nature and to achieve peace and balance. Buddhism preaches selflessness, compassion and the sincerity to embrass all things. confuciusism emphasises ethical standards, duty, rules and conduct in daily life. These aesthetic roots influences at various levels the approaches and concepts of chinese ink painters and also how they absorb western ideas of visual arts into their paintings.

Dr.Cheah continued to give the four essential characters of a good artwork. These again are very universal concepts that can be applied to all arts. They are: 1. ethnic root; 2. localisation; 3. personality; 4. contemporary or fitting to the period. An artist’s work should always find its root from his/her ethnic lineage. A search within one’s own ethnic culture is not only a way to enrich the work but to enrich the artist him/herself. Localistation refers to place we live and stay, our surroundings and environment. An artist should have the sensitivity to feel his/her own lived experience and represent them in the art. The region may not limit to a town, a city or a state. It can include even the whole region of southeast asia. Just consider how culturally connected we are to the indonesian, for example. Personality is essential to all artist. One cannot mimick the teacher’s work forever. The final character challenges the artist’s reflexivity to change with time. Artists mus be able to change with time.

Then comes the most important part, which is the explanation of the six principles of Hsieh Ho. The six principles are extracted from a very short conclusion from Hsieh Ho after he analysed many classical paintings during his time in 6th century China. That is perhaps the earliest academic study of paintings in history. He categorised the artists he analysed into six level of quality or standards. The understanding of the six principles to me have always been problematic. For one thing, they were written in classical mandarin where the meaning of each word can be problematic. Thus, throughout history, many scholars have given their own interpretation of the six principles since. The actual text can be found in googlebooks. I don’t think I will be so bold as to attempt to explain the six principles in detail here. That will take some more research and perhaps a few hundred words more.  The extracted version looks like this :《气韵生动》、《骨法用笔》、《应物象形》、《随类赋彩》、《经营位置》 and 《传移摹写》.

In the book “The way of the brush: painting techniques of China and Japan” By Fritz van Briesse, he compiled 7 versions of western translations of the six principles with the earliest by Herbert Allen Giles in 1905. In that, Giles only mentioned in passing the six methods without further elaboration. Arthur Waley in the early 1920 Burlington Magazine did analyse the six method more critically. He mentioned that the doctrines are not much different from the doctrines of the 19th century western academicians. James Cahill made a similar attempt to explain the six methods in an 1961 articles in Art Orientalis magazine. Here, his argument focused on the flaw in ancient chinese writings where punctuations were omitted. Although most later scholars accepted the fact that the six methods were in a four characters arrangement, it is possible to read them in pairs as well which will produce a slightly different meaning. As for a Taiwanese art historian Chiang Hsun, the six principles are described as steps or progression of an artist’s learning process to achieve the level described in the first principle. It is obvious from the translations that different scholars have very different understanding of the principles. That is the other problematic element of the 6 principles in my opinion which is the obscurity and vagueness of the statements itself. For this reason, it is virtually impossible for anyone to establish a valid interpretation of them. So, is it principles, canons, laws, methods? it will take forever to list out all the debates.

Dr.Cheah ended the lecture by giving a tour and real time application examples of the six principles to paintings in the gallery. Looking back, it is a worthy and fruitful lecture. Chinese ink painting has always been put in the back seat of contemporary art in Malaysia. They seem to operate entirely within their own realm of art community removed from contemporary art world. There must be a way to bridge this connection. My friend, Elias asked me a very relevant question which I have no answer during the lecture: ” Will Valentine Willie accept Dr.Cheah’s chinese ink paintings?” Who knows? hmm.. or does it matter?