Malaysian Artist for the Malaysia-Australia Visual Arts Residency 2011
Artist’s statement:
Haslin Ismail in his studio at Rimbun Dahan, with his work for the 2011 Art for Nature exhibition.
“I call the new body of artworks done at Rimbun Dahan ‘Ghost in the Shell’. Taking the same title from the work of Masamune Shirow’s manga and anime adaptation from director Mamoru Oshii, it is an experiment of two main components: the flesh and the machine. The clash between these two elements is highlighted by the creation of robots, machines and human anatomy. They relate to each other and give rise to an expression of function and technology. Visually, both the science fiction and fantasy world that dominate the atmosphere of my artworks present a wide range of routes and exciting explorations. I am a fan of the works of science fiction and fantasy visions such as Jules Verne, HG Wells and the great silent movie “Metropolis” by Fritz Lang. The amazing world of Osamu Tezuka, the super-galactic Star Wars trilogy, the genius of Hayao Miyazaki and Katsuhiro Otomo and so many more great masterpieces from the great masters of sci-fi and fantasy are my stimulation. When drawing, painting or creating works, I feel as if I am in their world, fighting with monsters on/from planet Mars or at war with damaged robot(s).”
“Supermarionation”, 2011, Oil pastel and acrylic on canvas, 214 x 152 cm.
“Ghost in the Shell”, 2011, Acrylic on canvas, 122 x 76 cm.
“Homage to Miyazaki”, 2011, Acrylic on canvas, 183 x 153 cm.
“Mind Game”, 2011, Watercolour on paper, 29 x 29 cm.
“The Day the Earth Stood Still”, 2011, Acrylic on jute, 213.5 x 213.5 cm.
“Things to Come”, 2011, Acrylic on canvas, 183 x 152.5 cm.
Artist’s Biography
Haslin Ismail (b. 1984) from Johor graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) from Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) in 2007. He has been creating and exhibiting his fantastical art pieces in various exhibitions since 2000. He was winner of the grand prize for In-Print: Contemporary British Art from the Paragon Press held at National Art Gallery in 2006. His first solo exhibition ‘Exorcismus Persona: Windows Into Fantasy Worlds of Haslin Ismail’ was at the RA Fine Arts Gallery in 2009. He was also the grand prize winner for the prestigious Young Contemporary Award (2010) at National Art Gallery with his entry of a complex and intricate paper/book art installation.He has also participated in group shows at National Art Gallery, Petronas Gallery, Taksu, Zinc, Valentine Willie Fine Art, Wei-Ling Gallery and the Annexe at Central Market.
Malaysian Artist for the Malaysia-Australia Visual Arts Residency 2010
Exhibition of Ilham Fadhli’s Work
The 16th Rimbun Dahan Residency Exhibition
6th to 20th March 2011 in the Underground Gallery at Rimbun Dahan
The cover of Ilham Fadhli’s catalogue for his exhibition at Rimbun Dahan in March 2011, featuring Seasonal Abyss, 2010-2011, oil & collage on canvas, 229cm x 305 cm.
When we look at various artworks, a certain definite chemistry sparks our senses. An artwork (should) never lie. Time spent on its surface, every moment of neglected emotions and
Ilham Fadhli Shaimy in his studio at Rimbun Dahan at work on a mixed-media on paper artwork for his contribution to Art for Nature 2010 ‘SURVIVAL’.
unspoken words turns into images that represent the maker’s sentiments. Again, only interesting artists produce interesting artworks. I find Ilham Fadhli a.k.a. Kojek an interesting person. From his ‘dark realms’ university days back in year 2000 up until now, he is, in my own three words – fascinating, promising and uncertain. These words describe his artworks too.
Some viewers may be interested in his landscapes, while others are more into his cynically narrated paper collages. He seldom sketches. If he did, the drawings were then overlaid with final images on the same canvas. When he starts to paint, I noticed he would almost constantly choose a central dominant image and with this, he keeps the enthusiasm or momentum going by rendering clouds and smokes. The images change so rapidly within just one day that it makes me eager for the final outcome. Small figures against vast landscapes remind one of J.W.M. Turner and Kalkitos (the 1980’s version) game. Kojek would totally immerse himself in the paintings. The artworks are visions of the things that he can never say in words directly. His “apocalypse and the end of the world whilst little people continue to survive” idea is a reflection of what we are today; whatever and however the outcome, we have to make good if not the best.
His current works is similar in concern and stylistically familiar but Kojek has started to insinuate more hope through his selection of images and colours. We can also trace these subtle transitions from the titles and the figures collaged onto his canvases. At first few glances, the viewer often thought that the small figures were painted. This approach with collages blends well with his chosen media. It has become his trademark to merge the smokes from burning buildings or fields with the clouds in the sky. He also develops a habit to watch the clouds while driving from home to Rimbun Dahan and vice versa. His favourite would be the biggest and darkest cumulonimbus against the clear blue sky. Cloud watching has become our pastime and breaks the unspoken silence between husband and wife.
He works every day, at home or at the studio, now or before this residency. Making artworks puts his mind at ease. He is definitely absorbing and benefiting from Rimbun Dahan’s positive atmosphere of fresh oxygen, loyal crew of dogs and his new circle of friends. Kojek’s debut in manipulating oil paint gave him certain pleasures. At first, his oil palette seems more vibrant. However, when the works were completed it looks almost exactly as his acrylics. Talking about such discoveries has become part of our lively discussions and dialogues in the studio at home.
A multi-faceted artist, making little trees or buildings for his (miniature world) dioramas is one of his interests. He also does stop-motion videos. In fact, he co-directed MONOPOL, my instructional video for the Fukuoka Triennale in 2005. Artists have the pleasure of creating and engrossing themselves in their own invented world. Some people may enter this realm, with open arms invitation and some with an extra effort. We can expect a more varied approach from Kojek in the future. Anyway, I saw him first.
Azliza Ayob, Equine Park, 5th January 2011
‘Collapse 2,’ 2010-2011, acrylic & collage on paper, 41cm x 31 cm.
‘Collapse 1,’ 2010-2011, acrylic & collage on paper, 41cm x 31 cm.
‘Dog, Father, One, Two and Tree,’ 2010, oil & collage on linen, 213cm x 213 cm.
‘Kandas,’ 2010-2011, charcoal & collage
on paper, 76cm x 56 cm.
About Ilham Fadhli
Born in Pasir Mas, 1980. Lives and works in Selangor, Malaysia.
Kojek graduated from UiTM Shah Alam with Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts in 2003. After winning the Major Prize for Young Artist Award 2006 and Consolation Prize for Mekar Citra, Merdeka Show, Galeri Shah Alam, Selangor 2007, his paintings and dioramas were exhibited at renown galleries such as Kebun Mimpi, Pace, RA Fine Arts and Galeri Nasional, Jakarta. Most of his works deals with contemporary issues in an absurd/surrealistic setting with collages of delicate figures. He is nominated for five awards at the IMCAS Iskandar Malaysia Show, to be announced soon. He is currently having his first solo show at PACE Gallery in October 2009. He is married to installation artist Azliza Ayob and blessed with 3 children.
Art Exhibitions & Activities
2010
SPICE Show, PACE Gallery, Kuala Lumpur
MATAHATI ArtTriangle, National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur
Anniversary Show, PACE Gallery, Kuala Lumpur
Once Upon A Time in Malaysia, SOLARIS Kuala Lumpur
WWF Art For Nature – SURVIVAL, Rimbun Dahan, Selangor
2009
Unfolding, RA Fine Arts, Ampang, Kuala Lumpur
Living Room: Art Couple Project, The Annexe Central Market & Jendela KL
IMCAS Iskandar Malaysia Art Exhibition, Danga Mall, Johor Baharu
WWF Art For Nature, Rimbun Dahan, Selangor
2008
Force of Nature, Pace Gallery, KL
Palestine Fund Raising Show, The Annexe, KL & National Library KL
Anniversary Show, Pace Gallery, KL
NIKE Pop Up Space Exhibition, Pavilion, KL (Beijing Olympics)
Rapat Umum Merdeka Show, RA Fine Arts, Ampang, KL
Friction, Two-Man Show, KebunMimpi, Bangsar, KL
Mea Culpa, RA Fine Arts, Ampang, KL
BANGUN, LostGenSpace, Taman Seputeh, KL
2007
Mekar Citra, Merdeka Show, Galeri Shah Alam, Selangor (Consolation Prize)
Jejak, Galeri Nasional, Jakarta, Indonesia
Not That Balai Art Festival (Performance), Annexe, Central Market, KL
SUPERSTAR 00:15, Rimbun Dahan, Selangor
Exhibition of Young Artist, Jeri’s Studio, Bangsar
Bau-Bau Café Opening Exhibition, Annexe, CM, KL
2006
Young Artist Award KLPAC/Gudang/Arts&Earth (Major Prize)
TABIK JERI, Balai Senilukis Negara
Mural Relief PROJEK 49 Merdeka, Balai Senilukis Negara
OPEN SHOW GUDANG
MINIATURE SHOW, GALERI SENI MAYA, KL
KARNIVAL KARNIVOR Group show, GALERI SENI MAYA, KL
POPCULTURE show, GALERI SENI MAYA, KL
Video art director & technical assistant for MONOPOL interactive installation, Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, Japan
2004
performance & video art : DIGEST THIS, notthatbalai art festival, Taman Seputeh, KL
Art4All international : artist & art donation, Bangkok, Thailand
video art director & technical assistant for SO, WHY SO SAD? :Footsteps, NAG, KL
set designer : Hari Keputeraan Sultan Pahang, Dewan SUKPA, Kuantan.
mural artist : Sek. Men. Sains Ulu Yam, NAG outreach programme.
interior & logo designer : Treehouse art & craft studio, Sri Hartamas, KL.
Art4All special needs children : volunteer, Arab Women Association & NAG, KL.
facilitator assistant : Gombak district art teacher refresher course, NAG, KL.
set design : PAHANG TOURISM CENTRE.
2002
VOLUME Fine Arts Degree show, UiTM Shah Alam.
technical assistant for RETURN TO INNOCENCE, the young contemporaries, NAG, KL.
2001
IDENTITI, NAG, KL.
crew : SITI DI ALAM FANTASI, Istana Budaya, KL.
ADA LANG ADA SIPUT ADA BAKAU ADA KITA, galeri SENIKA, Pahang
Choy Chun Wei is enjoying his time playing the “collector” and the “engineer” in Rimbun Dahan. Look around and you will find his workspace populated by jars and tubes of paint in different degrees of exhaustion, while piles of unidentifiable junk and a plethora of paraphernalia lay scattered across the floor. When I visited his studio recently, he tells me “I still return to the city to collect all this junk”. The process of collecting and constructing, or building, forms the root of Chun Wei’s artistic approach. Whether in the form of photographs, paint, ink, or other found materials, the potential in each of the artist’s materials will be stretched out, deconstructed, reconstructed and layered to present unique views of life within an urbanscape. Those familiar with Chun Wei’s body of work will recall his early photo-collage series such as Citadel and Link House from 2001. They were the result of a morning ritual whereby the artist would walk with his camera to work, photographing random exteriors of homes in Bandar Utama to relieve the monotony of this routine. The collection of photographs captured from these walks later grew into a series of musings about home within our fragmented urban environment seen through the eye of an outsider.
In his latest series, Construction Site, paint and found materials have replaced photographs to become the building blocks in the artist’s work. He tells me that every single paint mark and object is treated as an individual units, “like Lego blocks”, built layer upon layer, one over the other. Each work begins with the overlaying of paint onto the surface ground in broad sweeps. “I rarely know what is going to happen during the early stages so I just let it happen.” Once these initial sweeps have been established, ‘units’ of paint and materials are incorporated into and over the initial foundation through the use of a diverse range of tools – hands included – as well as other media to create a spectrum of marks and textures. It is clear, through this new body of work, that the artist has discovered a more instinctive and energetic process in creating image and texture; there is an obvious sense of play, as well as a newfound confidence in distilling the images to near abstraction.
The urban landscape and mapping continue to figure prominently in Chun Wei’s work. The ritual of returning to the city to collect the artist’s ‘junk’ bears poetic resonance in the artist’s dedication to his subject matter. While his mapping process may have begun within the immediate confines of Bandar Utama, his concerns have since extended into farther reaches, taking on a wider worldview beyond geography and tangible matter. Perhaps this development has been prompted by changes in the artist’s personal life. Marriage and moving out to a new home has shifted his outlook on life; he is no longer the wandering outsider looking in, but rather someone who has found hearth and home.
Construction Site begins with The Construction of Metaphysical Site I. While the spatial arrangement in this painting may appear conventional to the eye, it is nonetheless striking in its composition and form. It recalls the imaginary maps many of us would have drawn during childhood. Colours and simple geometric shapes are employed to demarcate different territories and densities while incidental marks may imply roads, railway tracks or borders. The Construction of Metaphysical Site II suggests a fantastical yet apocalyptic cityscape alluding to Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. Vertical forms, or monoliths, grow from opposite directions; they weave in and out of the dramatic foliage, moving towards each other, drawing closer to convergence.
Subsequent works such as The Changing Mindscape, Intimate Dwelling Site and Configuration l, demonstrate to the viewers that the spatial configuration in each painting has grown progressively tighter and denser through the course of development. The drama and density of this series culminates in the epic Big Dwelling Site. Impressive and intense, the painting’s expanse and tight overlapping layers of paint and found materials overwhelm the senses. The eye picks out the random details and unexpected textures as it roves through this dense forest of marks and colours; you will find bits of corrugated board here, unidentifiable slices of plastic and dried materials there, a shaved off bar code somewhere above. The painting possesses a cubistic resonance as the artist breaks up the picture plane to create multiple perspectives. They also remind us of Mondrian’s earlier paintings where grid and lines form the artist’s primary motives. Spaces move in and out, shifting from two-dimensional to three-dimensional planes, taking our eye on a manic ride through tightly wound nooks and crannies, before launching into exhausting claustrophobic areas that slowly ease off towards the edges.
Configuration lll (Breathing Space), one of the later pieces, sees the artist side-stepping his usual media employed in this series. It is perhaps the most carefree piece in this body of work, and as the title suggests, this painting provides a beguiling reprieve from the intense concentration of heavy impasto marks and texture. Here, the brush takes over from the palette knife to create a delicate yet intricate web of lines. They float evocatively in space, layered in muted neutral shades, amidst collaged drawings of furniture culled from the pages of an IKEA catalogue. The minimal treatment draws attention to the construction of the image, allowing the visual narrative and emotional content to exude its understated charm.
Adeline Ooi
December 2005, KL
Garden Objects
This is part of a series exhibited in Art for Nature 2005 that delves into the formation of mental maps to explore human dwellings within the landscape. The garden is a place for tactile and sensory engagement, where one may expand sensibility within space. Click on the thumbnails above to view larger images.
Biodata
Choy Chun Wei (b. 1973) is a graduate and full scholarship holder from the faculty of Graphic Design at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, majoring in Illustration. He has been actively painting and exhibiting in a number of exhibitions in Kuala Lumpur and won an Honourable Mention at the Philip Morris Malaysia/ASEAN Art Awards in 2003. In 2004, Chun Wei received the Juror’s Choice Award (2D) at the Malaysian Young Contemporaries Exhibition organized by National Art Gallery. He became the artist-in-residence at Rimbun Dahan Artist in Residence Programme in 2005.
Immersed in the richness and complexity of nature at Rimbun Dahan, Jasmine was searching for a dialectic experience with the plants and objects around her. Obsessed with the regular pattern of the lines and textures on plants, different sizes of leaves were collected as models and cast with plaster of Paris. Slabs of soft clay were pressed against the plaster moulds to question the ephemeral nature of the objects and things around us, and render the impermanent permanent.
‘Ceramic by its nature cannot escape medium-hood’. For an artist like Jasmine ‘working in a medium so identified with craft-based procedures, her clay sculpture is immediately subject to sustained discussion on its material language’, challenging the perception of the custody of material use and the art forms in contemporary art practice today in Malaysia.
Installation, as the British writer Michael Archer described it, is ‘a kind of art making which rejects concentration on one object in favor of a consideration of the relationships between a number of elements or of the interaction between things and their contexts’. In Jasmine’s case, her works were a suggestion of scene and environment, which derived from her memories as well as from reality. The imprinted clay leaves were glazed with color and scattered on fabric, referring to the changing seasons. For instance, the imprinted lotus leaves of various sizes mimic the green summer water pond. All these pieces of work bring the connection of the scene from outside to inside, from exterior to interior. The relationship of human to nature was revealed through Jasmine’s intellectual interest, her participating in nature and sharing that experience with others.
Stone carving, like clay forming, is a slow and time consuming process. The physicality of force and the gradual changes of surface and shape were important to Jasmine and can be seen in her stone sculptures. Inspired by the curved and pointed elegance of the Jade Vine flower, Jasmine used marble to reinterpret her chosen subject through the physical process of carving. The smoothness and reflective nature of the marble was tarnished, the solid surface was opened and revealed by force. The original shape of the Jade Vine was copied, altered and magnified. The meaning of the work lies not in the work itself but in our attitude towards the art work.
Jasmine Kok’s work ‘does not reproduce what we see, it makes us see’. Her intention is not simply about recording the natural world but in transforming an object, a space and environment into something profound and intellectual. The work offers a fresh vision to her and to the viewer. The perceptual knowledge about the place around her, about things and objects she encounters and feels, are shown through her sculpture and installation works in a stage of ‘metaphysics concerned with the nature of existence’.
During her studies in London, Jasmine participated in an organization called ‘Art Express’, where she taught wood and stone carving within the community for several years. She was also involved in art therapy projects with problem children and the homeless, and the feedback was positive. She had some special experiences working with other artists from different countries while in London, and shared different culture experiences when working in the quarries and sculpture parks.
In the past, Jasmine Kok’s sculpture was primarily figurative, but since her residency in Rimbun Dahan, her art practice has embarked on a whole new journey by exploring nature and different materials. The artist in residence programme allowed her to explore new perceptions within her art, while assisting her to develop and understand the arts of her homeland.
‘Blue Symphony,’ 110 x 110 x 3 cm, ceramic clay, glaze, glue, perspex and velvet, 2004.
‘Green Summer Dream 1,’ 46x 46 x 4 cm, ceramic clay, glaze, glue and velvet, 2004.
‘Green Summer Dream 5,’ 150 x 80 x 4 cm, ceramic clay, glaze, glue and velvet, 2004.
‘Peace,’ carved from a single block of Langkawi limestone.
‘Transformation (detail),’ 145 x 52 x 63 cm, marble, 2004.
‘Transformation,’ 145 x 52 x 63 cm, marble, 2004.
‘Transformation’ being lowered into the Rimbun Dahan underground gallery.
Biography
Jasmine Kok Lee Fong
Date of birth: 28th October 1970
Nationality: Malaysian
Address: C109, Kampung Kundang, 48020 Rawang, Selangor, Malaysia.
