Progressing from Fendy Zakri’s previous solo exhibition titled Seeing the Unseen, held at Richard Koh Fine Art in 2014, Hyphen Jocund extends the young artist’s pictorial investigation by the inclusion of organic shapes. Moving away from a visual language composed of nests of scribbles and scratches as well as the focus on optics mediated by digital technology evident in Seeing the Unseen, this current exhibition celebrates the simple beauty of organic shapes influenced by the human figure as well as the voluptuous sculptures of the late modern sculptor Henry Moore. The artist sees Moore’s abstracted figures as an honest return to primordial expressions and inspired the curvaceous stylized shapes of Hyphen Jocund, that vaguely resemble breasts and intestines. Each painting is an emotional accumulation of a person the artist has met recently, in which through a process of conversation with the person, the artist documents the “essence” the exchange through formal decisions such as color, composition, and shape. The inherent legibility of the simple shapes are scrutinized through marks created by a varying degree of rapid gestures, such a flailing, spraying, scratching and sprinkling, hinting at the process of painting that rely on spontaneity and quick decisions.
