Painters' Season

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)