As of 10 March 2010, RogueArt will be moving our office premises to:

I7 Taman Tunku Apartments
Bukit Tunku
50480 Kuala Lumpur

We’ve had a great stay at No. 19 Jalan Berangan, and we hope you have enjoyed the exhibitions and events we’ve organised and hosted there. Thank you for your support over the past year.

You can still call us at 016 266 7413 and email us at contact@rogueart.asia. Do also visit our website at www.rogueart.asia for our latest news.

We will be in touch soon with announcements of a number of our upcoming projects for 2010!

Harimau Malaya by Jalaini Abu Hassan

We wish you and yours Gong Hei Fatt Choy and a magnificent year of the Tiger! We are closed from 11 until 18 February 2010 but we are still reachable via our emails and mobile phones.

We were recently in Taipei and have concluded that despite the four-and-half hour flight time, grim weather and so-so food, the trip to Taiwan was definitely worth the time (and money) in order to catch Cai Guo-Qiang’s solo ‘Hanging Out in the Museum’ at the Taipei Fine Art Museum. As photography was strictly not allowed, it is quite impossible to describe the power and epic scale of the artist’s elaborate installations and gunpowder projects presented in this retrospective exhibition. Nevertheless, Rachel managed to sneak a few shots when the guard was not looking. (Please see below for scenes from the show, and apologies to TFAM for breaking rules!) The artist’s attention to detail, precision and the power of his underlying messages are literally mind blowing! The exhibition was divided into two parts: “Dramatic Time Condensed” on the first floor explores Mr. Cai’s tendency to “counteract time, so that movement and dramatic movement –which are only possible in time– are condensed into still objects”, while the second floor, titled “Contradictory, Changeable Gunpowder”, traces the development of Mr. Cai’s gunpowder exploits from early paintings with gunpowder to the blowing up of his ’sketches’. A comprehensive collection of video documentation also provide further understanding to Mr. Cai’s pyromaniacal ‘drawing’ process and gunpowder performances , and these range from earlier works such as the “Project for Extraterrestials” series (made during the 1990s) to the recent opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

“Head On“, an installation with 99 life-sized wolves, fabricated from sheepskins and stuffed with hay and metal wires, barreling in a continuous stream towards (and into) a glass wall, is definitely a Rogue favourite. Loaned from Deutsche Bank’s collection, this work is a critique of the German reunification. We found the artist’s statement “invisible walls are the hardest to dismantle” –describing the German condition – very apt for Malaysia too. All in all, we spent between three to five hours at the museum (twice!) and found ourselves quite reluctant to leave. To quote our travel companion Mr. Lau,  “Cai Guo-Qiang has single-handedly beat 5000 years of Chinese history” as he held our attention far longer than the National Palace Museum exhibition –5 hours as compared to 1 hour– displaying treasures from the Chinese world. We heart Cai Guo-Qiang : )

Please don’t miss out on this show if you are in Taipei, the show closes on 21 February 2010 (closed on Mondays and CNY).

The Taipei Fine Art Museum

Cultural Melting Bath : Project for the 20th Century

Rent Collection Courtyard

Rent Collection Courtyard

Head On

Inopportune : Stage One

Reflection - A Gift from Iwaki

Lucky Draw Prizes

Rachel was particularly excited about the Lucky Draw at TFAM. The prizes are: (Week #1) A pair of return tickets to Hong Kong; ( Week #2) Tea with Cai Guo-Qiang and a signed exhibition catalogue; (Week #3) TWD $ 20,000 (approx RM 2,200) Voucher from Eslite Bookshop; (Week #4) 1 iphone 3GS; (Week #5) A pair of return tickets to New York to visit Cai Guo-Qiang’s Studio and tea with the artist at the Empire State Building. WOW!!!

To make the trip even more worthwhile, we also caught Takashi Murakami’s print show at Arki Gallery near the Taipei Main Station, which will run until April 2010. We were impressed by the Taiwanese audience’s enthusiasm for art! There were at least 3 rows of people in front of any artwork at any one time when we visited Van Gogh’s exhibition at The National Museum of History. We also had to return to MOCA Taipei twice before we had the opportunity to enter the museum as we could not bear the 2-hour ticket queue outside the museum on our first visit. Rachel managed to squeeze in time to catch the ‘Visual Attract and Attack’ at MOCA Taipei (after the 2nd attempt) and here are pictures of some of the works on show.

The 2-hour queue outside MOCA

The Queen of Hearts in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Yang Moa-lin

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Yang Moa-lin

PixCell-Elk by Japanese artist Kohei Nawa

A sculpture by Takashi Murakami

Movement Age by Chen Zhiguang

Superheroes in fetus stage by Alexandre Nicolas

Baby Hulk

Baby Wonderwoman

Malaysia Boleh! It was a lovely surprise to see Chan Kok Hooi artworks here too!

(RN & AO)

The “WORK” exhibition was launched last saturday to a large crowd. Many thanks to all the participating artists who came early and all the guests that came to support this project!

Please visit the WORK exhibition page for more details on the project.

View of Zakii's and Kow's artwork

View of I-Lann's and Fuad's artwork

View of Siew Ying's and Jai's artwork

View of Hamir's, Fuad's artwork and Ramlan's sculpture

View of Ramlan's sculpture

View of I-Lann's and Fuad's artwork

Portraits of the artists by Tara

The participating artists, Tara Sosrowardoyo and RogueArt

The early birds...

Boss #1 & Boss #1 giving speeches

Raja Shahriman's sculpture and Tara's little room of portraits

The peak of the opening with crowds even on the 1st floor

The crowd spilling out of the house to the street...

RogueArt is proud to host 23 Reasons We Still Need Superman, a traveling video art festival devised and curated by Tim Crowley. This presentation is an extensive overview of video work from the last 15 years. In true Myspace/ Facebook fashion, the selection is both personalized and intentionally un-private, customized and compartmentalized yet available to all. It targets the interest of artists in investigating how images operate and construct our understanding of the world. They explore aesthetic concepts, everyday narratives, and sociopolitical realities and utopias. While some artists use the video to challenge our assumptions about the mimetic nature of the medium, the curatorial focus of 23 Reasons We Still Need Superman will be the relationship between performance and video, what reaction the works create in the audience and the subject matter as a catalyst for dialogue. Contemporary reality is an assemblage of whatever grabs our attention and we want these works to play part of the contemporary reality collage of the viewers, to form an alternative kind of map.

The opening of the video art festival is this Friday, 15 January 2010 from 7-10pm at 19 Jalan Berangan. The screening will also continue on Saturday, 16 January 2010.

Supported by Timeout KL and 19 Jalan Berangan.
The video art festival will continue its travel to Beijing, Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore.

Rogue-ish hosted a special weekend presentation by Flowerdrum Bags founder Rina Matsui-Houghton on Dec 11th at No. 19 Jalan Berangan. This exhibition of one-off pieces was inspired by 6-word memoirs of 30-something Malaysian women written by Suhana Dewi Selamat. Rina interpreted the essays in visual and textural form on everyday things that women see and touch, wear and use in the home.

Inspired by the nostalgic whimsy of Rina’s vintage materials and the charming furniture borrowed from our neighbour, The Curiousity Shop, we decided to host a retro afternoon tea party resplendent with cupcakes, shortbread fingers, chiffon cakes, cocktail sausages and pineapples on sticks, iced lemon tea and good ol’ Pimms No. 1. The weekend would not have been complete without a small sale of Flowerdrum Bags with vintage prints and designs that made the ladies go weak.

We were so chuffed with the set up the show that we thought we’d share a few pictures of the afternoon with you. (It’s may not be Betty Drabble’s perfectly put together home but it is good enough for some of us to live the fantasy for a minute or two.)

Check out our Rogue-ish website here for further details about Rina’s one-off pieces.

RogueArt are project managers for a major new publication project on Malaysian art - Narratives in Malaysian Art, an initiative of a group of editors and writers. Please come for Talk the Walk: A Discussion on Narratives in Malaysian Art on Saturday 5th December at 6pm at 19 Jalan Berangan, to launch the project. Hasnul Jamal Saidon from the editorial team will be providing some musical entertainment, with special guest artists!

Download the invite PDF.

For more info on the project, please go to our Publications page.

Contemporary Asian art collectors Alessandro Gasparini, Cristiana Gasparini and Sabrina D’Amely have this month opened a new exhibition space in Turin, Italy. Interestingly the inaugural show, Verso Manila, organised in conjunction with the Drawing Room Manila, hails from the Philippines, surveying established and younger contemporary artists including Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan, Kiko Escora, Jose Legaspi and Maya Munoz amongst others. We wish our friends all the best for their Italian debut.

(BY)

Natee Utarit, The Dwarf (2008)

Who can tell us which of Snow White’s acolytes this may be?

(in Tales of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow at Richard Koh Fine Art, KL)

It’s been an eventful September and October. The regional Art Market seems to have picked up, with a successful Sotheby’s Southeast Asian sale in Hong Kong, coloured by some supersize prices for people to talk about, and a couple of near sell-out shows at home in Kuala Lumpur. So people who are into the Art Market should feel a little more comfortable.

Chong Siew Ying, Jumping Dog in the Village (KIAS, Valentine Willie Fine Art, KL)

Natee Utarit, Alice in Ordinary Land (Tales of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Richard Koh Fine Art, KL)

While I’ve wondered if 2009 might be a good year for galleries to keep a low profile, I’m pretty pleased to have caught a few great exhibitions these past two months.

Painting may remain predominant in contemporary regional practice, but when faced with such a proliferation of “up-and-coming” young painting talents (at times questionable), it’s good to be reminded why we continue to put faith in the medium. Phuan Thai Meng’s Made in Malaysia exhibition at VWFA KL in September was impressive - beautifully painted, carefully considered, with a strong and clever socio-political undercurrent. It’s really heartening to see this artist come into his own with a first major solo show of such sophistication and punch, a formidable talent bearing bountiful fruit.

Phuan Thai Meng, Artificial Fountain

Phuan Thai Meng, Rewards

During Raya break in Manila, I managed to find my way to the opening of Geraldine Javier’s Butterfly’s Tongue at West Gallery in Quezon City. Harrowing, exquisite, extraordinary, Javier has once again outdone herself in this ambitious show. Fascinating species of beetle glow darkly on rich floral embroideries in gilt frames, placed like referential insets on paintings about sacrifice, wonder, Pre-Raphaelite romance, madness. The show resounds with the mystery and romance of craft, manmade, natural, insidious, violent, while casting an interesting light on the mythical narrative of painting. Someone liked it so much that it has now moved across Metro Manila to Manila Contemporary in Makati for another run.

Geraldine Javier, The Perfect Blossom

The Perfect Blossom (detail)

Also while in Manila I made my first visit to SLab (Silverlens Lab) which was exhibiting Tears, Cuts and Ruptures: a Philippine Collage Review, cutting across influential veterans like Roberto Chabet and Gerardo Tan to young artists like Poklong Anading and MM Yu. We tend to forget the subtle pleasures of collage and assemblage, and these Filipino artists possess the wit, bravado and that eye for the esoteric that make the old-fashioned cut-and-paste well worth poring over.

Down in Singapore for the art fair, Agus Suwage’s CIRCLE at STPI made my trip - Suwage’s sensibility really seems to have gelled with the project, playing off the wide range of technical possibilities of print and paper and the strategies of reproduction, as well as the whole high-end glamour element of STPi (Suwage used his controversial work Pink Swing Park - and his original model for that installation, Izabel Jahja - as a springboard for the project). Very cool, very yummy, very desirable.

Agus Suwage, Self Dot 1

Agus Suwage, Rain Dot 1

(BY)