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LOOK
to SEE
November 25, 2016 – January 25, 2017
SHALINI GANENDRA FINE ART @ Gallery Residence
Tues – Sat. 11am – 7pm
+603 7932 4740
LOOK
to SEE, an launching with SGFA’s participation in the GALLERY WEEKEND
KUALA LUMPUR 2016 (www.gw-kl.com),
unveils the recent works of established Malaysian artists Bibi Chew,
Zac Lee, and developed works by relative new comer, Mok Yee. All
three artists work with focussed intention, strategic technique ,
producing only a few works every year.
Each
artist uses distinct materials. Bibi Chew employs local content to
create delicate works that reflect lightness despite the layers of
weighty message they are founded on.
Zac
Lee’s translucent, painterly imagess on jute speak to the challenges
of biased and inefficient systems.
Mok
Yee uses available materials to shape visions of community,
compromise and content, informed by a disciplined and intuitive sense
of spacial placement.
And
so, LOOK to SEE has evolved to become exactly that, a showcase of
beautifully crafted works that on general glance are importantly,
just that – beautiful. On closer examination, the details reveal more
to See, to connect and develop the Mind and also the Eye.
BIBI
CHEW:
Moved by ideas of cultural identity, Bibi Chew takes on challenging
issues of race, environment and gender, creating commentary through
familiar objects. She has used and transformed leaf-wrapped bundles,
eggs, glass bottles, sand, wooden boards, butterfly catchers and
coffee strainers into metaphors for marginalisation, destruction and
containment. She has carved, stitched and layered pieces into a
united form.
Her
work speaks of a delicately controlled self, presenting beauty with
layers of meaning.
Living
in Malaysia, a nation where even one’s identification card details
race – the issues of cultural difference and institutionalised
ethnicity are unavoidable. Chew deals with these issues
pragmatically, combining an acknowledgement of reality and an ability
to see beyond containment and boundaries. Recently, she completed a
site commission for the Iskandar Art Project, Johor Bahru, using a
local bridge as a platform to showcase her iconic Wind Catchers.
Chew
has won a number of important accolades including: The Young
Contemporary Awards 2000, National Art Gallery Malaysia; The Gertrude
Street Contemporary Art Space, International Visiting Artist’s Studio
Residency; and the Most Outstanding Student Award, School of Fine
Arts, LaSalle-SIA, College of the Arts, Singapore. She was a nominee
for the Smithsonian Artist Residency in 2012.
ZAC
LEE:
Zac Lee's fluid strokes study sublime behaviours and relationships,
presenting 'trace evidence' of cultural, societal and personal
instincts and interactions. Objects and forms are metaphors for
individual and community, often showing contemporary applications of
traditional folklore and national iconography.
With
a strong training in Chinese brush and traditional painting genres,
Lee embraces experimentation in his growing contemporary practise,
which includes painting, photography, silk screening and digital. He
continues to engage with realism, abstraction, language and
illustration to present psychological puzzles and make elegant social
commentary.
Lee
was awarded the Vermont Studio Fellowship in 1997, and the Three
Shadows Residency , Beijing, in 2011. In 2014 he was a Finalist for
the Sovereign Art Prize and again nominated in 2015.
With
annual showings of work in Kuala Lumpur and New York, and inclusion
in significant public and private collections locally and
internationally, Lee is a valuable voice for regional contemporary
commentary.
MOK
YEE:
Mok Yee works in many formats, including installation. He uses
readily accessible materials as tools for expressing on his own
culture and political leanings. Through this material vocabulary, he
re-interprets and re-constructs the characteristics and purposes of
these objects, creating elegant designs weighted with commentary but
light to the view.
Mok
Yee is also a member of the famed Hands Percussion, a musical
ensemble known for distinctive sound display, performance and
training, that results in unique audience engagement. He attributes
his sensitivity to spacial placement, a sense that signficantly
influences his aesthetic practise, in part, to this training in
addition to a natural affinity to the dimensional.
He
has exhibited his work locally and internationally, including in
London, Korea and Germany, since 2012 and is a graduate of Middlesex
University, London (2014) and the Dasein Academy of Art, Kuala Lumpur
(2010).
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