Art Central Hong Kong 2016

Richard Koh Fine Art (RKFA) is pleased to showcase a group presentation of works by Malaysian artists which include Haffendi Anuar, Justin Lim, Nadiah Bamadhaj, Saiful Razman, Tan Wei Kheng and Yeoh Choo Kuan at Art Central Hong Kong 2016 (Booth B2), from 23 to 26 March 2016. The fair will be held at the Central Harbourfront Event Space, 9 Lung Wo Road, Central, Hong Kong.

Featuring recent works by both established and emerging Malaysian artists, the presentation aims to bring to the fore their diverse practices and approaches. Working with exciting mediums and each with a distinctive style that challenge and intrigue, whether in the realms of figuration or abstraction, these artists signal an imaginative way forward for the flourishing Malaysian contemporary art scene. With Art Central’s base in Hong Kong, the cultural center of Asian contemporary art, RKFA’s presentation aims to focus attention to emerging practices within Malaysian art on a regional platform.

Astute social commentary guides the artists’ approaches, albeit in markedly different ways. The social intricacies of contemporary society are given particular prominence in the works of Nadiah Bamadhaj, comprising of visually arresting charcoal on paper collage works. Currently based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, her works form an emboldened consideration of gender politics and society’s apathy and glaring indifference towards gender inequality. Meanwhile, Tan Wei Kheng paints the Orang Ulu indigenous people of Sarawak, creating evocative portraits in oil which also function as observations on the increasingly marginalized existence of these resilient native communities.

Another emerging strand in Malaysian contemporary art is an examination of the social contemporary context in a manifestly more conceptual measure. Saiful Razmancreates pieces in a language of gestural abstraction devoid of statement-making, as an exploration into technique, media and visual construction. Treading on similar grounds, Justin Lim’s series of textural paintings engages the medium within which he works by using potent metaphors, experimenting with symbols while referencing urban subcultures. Both artists make use of industrial materials alongside conventional ones, placing emphasis on the act and processes of painting.

Merging the aforementioned conceptual explorations into a more defined form of narrative, both personal and political, the works of Haffendi Anuar looks at his local context in Kuala Lumpur to explore representations of the urban language through a language of geometric abstraction and the conventions of painting, in an interrogation of modernity and its dispositions. Comparably, the striking abstract language of Yeoh Choo Kuan is an extensive experimentation into the material qualities of paint and artistic processes, inserting personal narratives and hints of figuration into his luscious and tactile paintings. These investigations, though pronouncedly distinct, illustrate the forward-thinking approaches of Malaysia’s current crop of emerging artists.