Malaysian painter Tan Choon Ting undertook a 3-month residency at Rimbun Dahan from March to May 2025.
About the Artist
Tan Choon Ting was born in Johor Bahru, Malaysia in 1992. Graduated from the Fine Arts Department of National Changhua Normal University in Taiwan in 2019. In recent years, he has been focusing on painting as his main creation. In his creation, he is interested in accident, expressiveness of painting and microcosm.
https://www.instagram.com/tanchoonting
About the Residency
At Rimbun Dahan, I created works about nightscapes, portraits, plants, and passive imagination.
What impacted me the most when I first arrived here was the nightscape. I enjoy gazing into the night—it feels mysterious, and at the same time, there’s a strange pleasure in being conquered by it. I tried to find a subjective color that could represent this feeling within the night.
Portraits and plants always seem to “appear” together. My understanding of the plants didn’t come from actively studying them, but rather through the words of speakers during the guided tours here—those moments of “Ah, so that’s what it is.” This way of encountering things is a kind of escape I long for, a way to receive what we often call inspiration.
As for passive imagination—one day, on my way out to buy groceries, I saw some common roadside plants, and suddenly felt a sense of rediscovery. Perhaps this feeling came from the contrast with having stayed in the jungle of Rimbun Dahan for some time. It refreshed and reversed my perception, creating an alternating relationship between subject and object. At one moment, the inside becomes the outside; at another, the outside turns into the inside—pointing freely in either direction.
