Richard Koh Fine Art (RKFA) is pleased to showcase a group presentation by Anne Samat, Faizal Yunus, Hasanul Isyraf Idris, Haffendi Anuar, Hings Lim, Liew Kwai Fei, Liu Hsin-Ying, Melissa Tan and Yeoh Choo Kuan at Art Stage Singapore 2017, Booth C8, Level B2, Sands Expo and Convention Center, Marina Bay Sands, 10 Bayfront Avenue, Singapore 018956 from 12 – 15 Jan 2017. The artists will be showing recent works in a variety of media, ranging from wall-mounted mixed media works, free-standing sculptures, print works, drawings and paintings.
This year presentation at Art Stage Singapore 2017 aims to highlight a breadth of divergent practices illustrating a broad range of material concerns and conceptual focus. The artworks demonstrate the dynamic artistic and creative energies from Malaysia and Singapore in practices that tackle varying issues such as, abstraction in painting, unconventional printmaking techniques, the Malaysian identity and the transient nature.
The Malaysian identity is explored in Anne Samat's wall-mounted mixed media sculptural works that bridge the foreign and exotic to the everyday. Through assemblage and a host of weaving techniques, she mixes domestic objects with traditional craft to create works that draw influence from Malaysia's tribal culture and life in the suburb. Also exploiting materials from the everyday, albeit its traces, Faizal Yunus's mono-prints record the contours and silhouettes of everyday materials, creating ghostly abstract printed paintings on canvas. The young artist works in an economical manner, recycling bits of cardboard and other fragments of leftover packaging to become wobbly 'matrixes' or printing surfaces for his images.
The urban landscape serves a source of inspiration for a number of artists working in urban areas. Taking the form of drawing as a method of contemporary story-telling, Penang-based Hasanul Isyraf Idris's mixed media drawings recycle and remixes regional myths, local folktales with street and graffiti art. Popular culture and urban life in Malaysia are re-interpreted through a personal lens and articulate narratives which address existential issues such as life and death, sin, reward and love. While Haffendi Anuar's sculptures and wall-works are informed by the urban fabric and vernacular architecture of Kuala Lumpur with the collective idea of progress as a fleeting and unstable notion. Modular and geometric in their forms, when the singular painted panels are playfully constructed in groupings, they visually echo recognizable figures and objects.
Also approaching geometric abstraction but through minimal means, Liew Kwai Fei's block color acrylic on paper in shaped frames works were executed in 2010 as part of his Colour, Shape, Quantity, Scale series. Initially exhibited in a derelict structure in Kuala Lumpur, installed to complement the architectural interiors, hanging above doors, clinging side walls or arranged on the floors, the works playfully opens the opaqueness of abstract art as approachable artistic genre through vibrant colors and simple shapes. Also sensitive to the way works are installed, Melissa Tan's intricate reliefs inspired by the internal structures of rocks and minerals are presented in a grouping almost like an installation. Composed of handcut watercolor paper and metal sheets, these works by the young Singaporean artist are an extension from her recent solo exhibition Arc of Uncertainties. Though the visual language sourced from within, Liu Hsin-Ying's mixed media paintings attempt to personify thinking, giving the cerebral exercise or thought, fluid mysterious forms. She finds poetic inspiration from a variety of sources in the physical world, intergalactic objects, curves in nature and the idea of the whole and its individual parts.
Working in the veins of gestural abstraction, Yeoh Choo Kuan's self-coined "Fleshing Abstraction" paintings display tactile surfaces and luscious expressive brushwork. The paintings are framed within crate-like custom produced boxes. The scratched surfaces of the paintings allude to the collective frustration felt by the artist and some of the people in Malaysia over the nation's current social and political climate. Finally, Hings Lim will also be presenting gestural abstract paintings that are by-products of collaborations with different urban communities. The artist engages marginal communities to contribute in the painting process for example using a bicycle wheel as a mark-making tool to smear painting on a canvas with a group of migrants on an urban curbside or collaborating with domestic cleaners to erase and create marks in home setting.
Anne Samat (b. 1973, Malaysia) is a fibre textile artist who graduated in 1995 from Mara Institute of Technology, in Malaysia. She holds a Bachelor Degree in Art and Design (textile design) with a major in Weaving and a minor in Print and Resist. Anne is the first prizewinner in the PNB/ National Art Gallery of Malaysia Contemporary Young Artist competition held in 1997. She was also selected by the National Art Gallery to represent Malaysia at the International Art and Craft Fair in Bangkok in 1999. Known to inject traditional Malaysian woven techniques and decorative designs with contemporary aesthetics and conceptual ideas, Anne's work addresses issues of identity and nationhood by pushing the boundaries of weaving techniques infused with everyday materials.
Faizal Yunus (b. 1989, Malaysia) graduated from Mara University of Technology (UiTM) with a bachelor degree in Fine Art in 2012, majoring in printmaking techniques. He recently mounted his first solo exhibition Matrix at Richard Koh Fine Art , Kuala Lumpur in the late 2016 and has participated in a number of group exhibitions in Malaysia since 2010. Originally from Pahang, he now lives and works in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Haffendi Anuar (b. 1985, Malaysia) is an artist based in Kuala Lumpur. He produces sculptures, paintings, installations and drawings. He initially studied at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence and completed his BA Honors at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. In between his studies, he worked as a model maker at T.R. Hamzah and Yeang in KL, studied Mandarin in China, worked in art galleries in London and Kuala Lumpur and assisted artists in studios in London. Haffendi's multidisciplinary practice mines history of art, digital technology, nature and local contexts to create object-based works that recycle found images, objects and artistic styles from digital and physical sources.
Hasanul Isyraf Idris (b. 1978, Malaysia) was trained at Mara University of Technology (UiTM), in Perak. He has received a number of awards, including the Young Contemporary Arts Award in 2007 at the National Visual Arts Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, the Incentive Award at the Open Show held at the Shah Alam Gallery and the Consolation Prize for the Young Talent Art Exhibition at the Penang Art Gallery, Penang. Hasanul produces works in a variety of media, from paintings and meticulously crafted drawings to painted oven-baked clay sculptures. Mining inspiration from within and well as local folklore and regional myths, he articulates his personal struggles as an artist by personifying them as strange characters that inhabit his invented universes. Influenced by the graphics of underground comic books, 1960s science fiction, fast food, street art and fashion, he juggles pop-culture references with a personal viewpoint. Recurring topics in his practice are the meaning of life and death, memories and fantasies, sin and reward.
Hings Lim (b. 1989, Malaysia) studied Fine Arts at the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Malaysia. In 2012, he was awarded the chair of P. Ramlee from Petronas Award. He is a multidisciplinary artist based in Kuala Lumpur and works in a wide range of materials. He is interested in the fusion of social experience between art and life while also attempts to challenge the conventions of art and explore its social, cultural and political functions. He was active in running community art project and worked collectively in organizing workshops with National Visual Arts Gallery since 2013. He recently mounted his first solo exhibition Reciprocity at Richard Koh Fine Art in the early part of 2016.
Liew Kwai Fei (b. 1979, Malaysia) is an artist trained at the Malaysian Institute of Art (MIA) graduating with a diploma in Chinese ink painting. A well-exhibited artist, he has contributed works in many exhibitions locally and abroad as well as participated in various residencies in Malaysia, Pakistan, Australia and India. His works, which exude a DIY aesthetic include paintings, drawings, multimedia pieces and sculptural installations and explore the construction of meaning through cultural symbols along with mono and multilingual textual references. He lives and works in Selangor, Malaysia.
Liu Hsin-Ying (b. 1991, Taiwan) and was trained at the Art Students League in New York, New York in 2013 and at the Department of Fine Art, Taipei National University of the Arts, Taipei, Taiwan, graduating in 2015. She works in a variety of medium and approaches such as painting, drawing, video and performance art, drawing inspiration from the personal and cerebral. She is currently based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Melissa Tan (b. 1989, Singapore) is an artist based in Singapore and received her BA (Fine Arts) from Lasalle College of the Arts, Singapore in 2011. Her works are based on nature, themes of transience and beauty of the ephemeral. Her recent projects revolve around landscapes and the process of formation. Interested in geography and textures of rocks, she explores to translate the visual language through different mediums. Employing processes such as paper cutting, painting and silk-screen techniques, she is interested in materiality and how the medium supports the work. Though trained as a painter, she also works with video, sound and objects. She was included in The Singapore Show: Future Proof, Singapore Art Museum at 8Q in 2012 and An Atlas of Mirrors, Singapore Biennale 2016, Singapore in 2016. She also participated in the National Art Council and Dena Foundation Artist Residency program (Paris, France) in 2013.
Yeoh Choo Kuan (b. 1988, Malaysia) lives and works in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His work constitutes a unique synthesis of disintegrating working method, known for his self-coined "Fleshing Abstraction", a process that focuses on the characteristics of color, texture, surface and construction materials. Choo Kuan works with imageries that both engage the hedonistic and disastrous, in which the results are sculptural whilst appearing painterly.
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