Abstract Expressionism - in the works of Khalil Ibrahim

There is something sublime, ethereal and yes, perhaps, even a little spiritual about the Expressionistic abstract works created by that master Malaysian artist - Khalil Ibrahim.

Ever since his art apprenticeship in 1960s England (at St.Martin’s School of Art, central London) meeting Malaysian abstract/expressionist artist Ibrahim Hussein (known for Gardu – 1968 and My Father the Astronaut - 1970) and, later, meeting with Malaysian Expressionist painter/poet Latiff Mohidin (famous for his Pago Pago series) - there had been a distinctly abstract undercurrent to many of Khalil Ibrahim’s works.

There seems little doubt that studying at an English art school, learning fresh ways of seeing, coupled with having contact with artists discovering new approaches to their art and lives, changed the way Khalil approached his own artistic works.  

Destruction I

 In art school, in London, the student Khalil began experimenting with abstract forms in works such as Judith in Still Life and Abstract Queens Gardens Bayswater, drawn into his sketch book and demonstrating the artist’s attempts at bringing portraiture and concepts of abstraction together.  Later he painted Destruction and Destruction II (1960-1965) which bear the hallmarks of European Expressionism and experimentation with organic and inorganic forms, as well as uses of contrasting colouration. 

Inevitably, at art school, students are encouraged to try different mediums.  Khalil produced Geese (1965) - a delectable figurative work, in gouache, bordering on abstraction, while another of his gouache-on-paper works - Figurative Study (1965), sees the artist leaning towards the abstractions and influences of Expressionism, both in the movement of the subject and in its colour style while leaning towards elements of cubism or perhaps Italian Futurism in the figurative ‘movement’ of both pieces. 

 

Sutherland

There is little doubt that Khalil was exposed to British art during his sojourn in London, and was perhaps even influenced by artists such as Graham Sutherland, Michael Ayrton, John and/or Paul Nash, particularly for works such as Destruction I and II.  The artists mentioned were well known in British artistic circles at the time Khalil was in London and their works popular, and accessible.  

David Hockney, Britain’s best loved modern painter, frequently visited St. Martin’s while Khalil was there, giving lectures, while Eduardo Paolozzi, who studied at St. Martin’s (in 1944), was producing abstract Pop influenced screen prints at the time of Khalil’s studentship in London. 

Abstract 1

Whatever those influences were, they appear to become more prominent in Abstract I (1968) – a natural progression from Destruction I and II and demonstrating an interest in organic abstraction, similar to those expressed by the British artists already mentioned.  

In London, Khalil’s art works were still in flux as he sought styles and methods which spoke of his own unique journey.  Temporarily abstraction was abandoned while he painted Self Portrait (1965), in acrylics, though it would be hard to deny the influences of Picasso’s Classicism in this picture. 

One year further on (1966), and Khalil was still seeking an artistic ‘voice’ as he painted Temerloh Girl (1966), which is a stunningly beautiful study, reminiscent of the Post-Impressionist works of Paul Gauguin.  This work is an acrylic, on board, which has all the feel of Gauguin’s ‘warm’ oil paintings from the South Seas – Tehamana Has Many Ancestors (1893) perhaps or Girl with Fan (1902).  It is another early indication of Khalil’s fascination with colour and Post- Impressionist, if not Expressionistic abstraction.  Khalil’s Temerloh Girl is also reminiscent of Malaysia’s Mazli Mat Som’s Yati (pastel – 1963).

Yati

A few years later (1970) there is an interesting (untitled) colour pencil on paper drawing which demonstrates Khalil’s leanings towards Expressionism and/or the German Blue Rider group (Der Blaue Reiter).  The drawing is untitled, but the intriguing use of primary colours suggests Khalil’s fascination not only with form, but also with colour too.  

In the pages of Khalil’s 1970s sketchbook we see, for the very first time, abstract images which occur and reoccur throughout the next three decades of Khalil’s painting– the brief watercolour sketches (Abstract Figures) which eventually form the basis of works like Abstract 11 (1996), Velocity IV (2003) and Figurative Celebration 1(2004), which was seen in the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia’s Merdeka 50 book, A Celebration of Malaysian Art.

Portrait of a Balinese Lady

Khalil’s absorption in Expressionism is finally revealed with his painting Portrait of a Balinese Lady (1975) – and the influences of painterly styles like Van Gogh’s self evident. Five years later, in his 1980s sketch book, Khalil took great pains to copy a paragraph, concerning Expressionism, from an art book, while he was in Switzerland - such was his love for and fascination with the subject. 

Expressionism

            The search for expressiveness of style by means of exaggerations and distortion of line and colour: a deliberate abandon of naturalism implicit in Impressionism in favour of simplified style which should .....far greater emotional impact, in this sense of emotional force expressionism is feature of non-Mediterranean art in general.  In the more limited context of modern art Expressionist movement may be said to spring from Van Gogh’s use of drastically simplified art line and very strong colour

 The road to abstraction is frequently a long one, and Khalil’s interest in painterly abstraction surfaces in other ways throughout his artistic career.  This becomes evident in such works as the airbrushed oil painting Airbrush Abstract (1981) – essentially oil on canvas with a red background over-sprayed with blue, with small red bands at the top and a lighter blue band at the base.  Further abstractions include Refections IV (1981) and Shadow XX11 - painted in acrylic (1981). 

Shadow XXII

Shadow XXII is an early East Coast painting, using starkly saronged figures in silhouetted colour against a predominantly red background.  Variously coloured figures appear in a strip of lighter red near the top of the painting, rendering a more graphic feel to the painting over all.  It is a distinctive work, clear and crisp in its execution. 

Over the length of his artistic career, Khalil’s abstractions were somewhat overshadowed by his other, more naturalistic works until, that is, he moves towards the 2000s.  That is when Khalil began producing such intriguing paintings such as - Abstract II (oil -1996), East Coast Series VI (acrylic – 1998) and Bayang-Bayang 1 (2002).

Bayang Bayang II

In some respects Bayang-Bayang 1I looks back to Shadow XXII - there is a familiar ‘bar’ of colour towards the top of the canvas and the figures in Bayang-Bayang 1I may be seen to be silhouettes similar to those in Shadow XXII, though the former work has a more painterly style, less stark.

Pembicaraan III (2002), Velocity IV (2003), Tangtu (2003) Pura (2003) Padang Galak (2004), Pabean (2004) and the ink on paper set of images from Bali, Indonesia, entitled The Spirit of the East Coast and Sanur (2003-2004) continue this trend. 

There is a continuance of the East Coast series, not only in watercolour but also in acrylics and others in oils.  Paintings such as Malam di Pantai (acrylic - 2007) are semi-abstracts inspired by life on the East Coast of Malaysia.  Pantai Melawati (acrylic - 2004) also highlights Khalil’s tendency towards abstraction while the Pericaraan series (2002) – watercolours and acrylics, and the Vivacity series (2004) – acrylics.  These take Khalil’s movement towards abstraction one step further, leaning in the direction of a purer form of abstraction and more in keeping with the artist’s previous penchant for Expressionism and Expressionistic abstraction.

Perbicaraan VI

It is, perhaps, the Vivacity and Pericaraan series where Khalil Ibrahim has been heading all along, ever since his sojourn in the London art school.  In both of these series the artist’s fondness for Expressionism shines through like a beacon of light radiating colour and movement onto his watercolours and canvases.   

It is in paying homage to the likes of Van Gogh, Emil Nolde (The Dance round the Golden Calf - 1910), Franz Marc (Struggling Forms – 1914) and Max Pechstein (Evening in the Dunes – 1911) that the artist Khalil Ibrahim seems happiest, engaging with the colours and forms found on the East Coast of Malaysia and rendering his own vibrant Malaysian Expressionist/abstract style to engage the viewer.

sentAp December 2010

Vibrancy - a forthcoming exhibition by Voon Kim Cheong

There is a tremendous energy and movement which emanates from the works of Voon Kim Cheong - a resonance and a vibrancy which almost catches the casual viewer off-guard with his stunningly beautiful paintings.

In Voon Kim Cheong’s vivacious oil canvases, reminiscent of Italian Futurism, curved kites dart and sway in the wind - tossing and turning amidst turbulent thermals.  Gyroscopically spinning tops whirl and jostle while lively multi-racial drummers pound out the country’s life-beat, reverberating and resonating with a dynamic passion uniquely displayed in a sultry equatorial Malaysia.

Born in 1968, In Kuala Lumpur, Voon Kim Cheong graduated from the Saito Academy of Graphic Design in 1992.  He sought further training as a fine artist and has made a living in illustration, design and painting.

He was included in the Young Artists Exhibition, 1995, in Klang, Selangor and The Philip Morris Group of Malaysia Awards at the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur in 1999.  The following year (2000) Voon Kim Cheong had art works in ‘Little Treasures Art Exhibition’ organised by Klang Fine Art Centre, The Philip Morris Group of Malaysia Awards, again at the National Art Gallery and ‘The First Step’ art exhibition organised by Klang Fine Art Centre, Klang, Selangor.

In 2001 Voon Kim Cheong exhibited in the ‘Open Show 2001’ in the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, and five years later was part of the 1^st Malaysia World Art Tourism Expo 2006 at MITC Ayer Keroh, Malacca.  The following year he took part in the International Art Exhibition 2007 as part of the Malaysia’s 50^th anniversary celebrations at the Daiichi Modern Art Gallery in Sungei Petani, Kedah.

As part of an international initiative, Voon Kim Cheong took part in the ‘World of Imagination’ (Vol 2) - an exhibition in the APW Gallery, Long Island City, USA, in 2009.  There his works was part of 2000 paintings, hung in a single gallery, featuring 500 artists worldwide.  That same year he took part in the Malaysian Chinese Art Exhibition, celebrating the 35^th anniversary of Malaysia/China ties, at the Cheng Ho Cultural Museum, Malacca.   That year he also had his work exhibited in the Penang Art Society 56^th Anniversary Art Exhibition in the Penang State Art Gallery, Penang.  In 2010 Voon Kim Cheong took part in the International Famous Artists’ Paintings Exhibition at the Daiichi Modern Art Gallery in Sungei Petani.

The current exhibition springs from work the artist had done back in 1998 – Rhythm of the Night.  It is a darker piece, more surreal than his later works but, in it, is the love of music – a combining of musical instruments that brings to mind the Chilean surrealist Roberto Matta, the colouration and fluidity of line of Frans Marc (The Little Blue Horses  - 1911) or the dynamics of The Golden Eye by Max Ernst (1948). 

Voon Kim Cheong’s latest work focuses, primarily, on Malaysian drums, drummers and drumming using dynamic rudiments of the ‘curved line’.  Other elements on show are spinning tops (Gasing), flying kites (Wau) and the ‘Performer’ series, accompanied by still life, fishing villages and antique architecture.

Drums and drumming are integral to the races living harmoniously in Malaysia.  A full Chinese drum troupe may consist of 24 drums - 6 representing each season from the first of spring to the great freeze.  Malays use a longer drum called a ‘Gendang’, of which there are more than a dozen different types, used in civil and religious ceremonies.  Malaysia’s Indian population have brought with them the popular drums of India, used in the north and south of that country and there are many other drums used by indigenous peoples. 

‘I use the idea of drum to represent the sun and moon.  Sun is harder while the moon is soft.  Sometimes when you bang a drum it is hard, and the sound is hard, at other times it is soft.  When I paint the images of drumming, I try to depict colours relevant to the race of the drum and drummers, in my work’ said Voon Kim Cheong as he revealed the passion, energy and vitality explicit in the reverberations of Malaysian drums depicted through his rich, evocative canvases.

With influences from Picasso, Cubism and Futurism, Voon Kim Cheong’s art works are reminiscent of those spectacular paintings by master Futurist Umberto Boccioni in their lyrical sweeps of movement and dynamic colouration.  Voon Kin Cheong’s latest works have his figures spring with gusto from the canvases, aided by carefully placed colour dynamics and racing shapes which immediately engage the viewer.

Even in the simplicity of black and white, Voon Kim Cheong’s work explodes with a painterly intensity seldom seen in a young Malaysian artist.  Whether dancers sway, drummers beat; kites drift, or tops spin Voon Kim Cheong’s works are about delicious movement, vibrant energy, a resounding passion for art and a love for life.

Airey Watercolours and Thundering Hooves

Khoo Khay Tat was born in Penang in1938.  At twenty-two he had success in an exhibition entitled Six Young Artists, in Penang (1960).  In 1986, the National Art Gallery exhibited the artist’s work and, during the next decade, he held many exhibitions including several memorable showings with the Penang Watercolour Society - which he had joined in 1986.

From 20000 to the present Khoo Khay Tat has been prolific with his work.  He has held nearly thirty exhibitions in countries as far ranging as Taiwan, China and Japan, culminating in his current exhibition in Kuala Lumpur. 

 

In 2001 he won an award at the 20^th Japan Modern Art Association, in Osaka, and in 2008 he was part of the Malaysian contingent of artists chosen to attend the 4^th Exhibition of New Impressions of Asian Art, in Henan, Zhenzhou, China. 

This current retrospective spans an artistic career of some fifty years and, in this way, is also a poignant landmark for the artist.  Khoo Khay Tat, from his early years in the 1960s as a budding young artist, to his highly successful time as a watercolourist and through to contemporary times as an internationally renowned artist demonstrates his skill as an accomplished master, able to successfully turn his hand to any medium and elucidate any subject.

Khoo Khay Tat’s, richly deserved, fiftieth year retrospective exhibition presents a variety of new works from his delicately sensitive watercolours to his vibrant oils.  In this way Khoo Khay Tat has recorded and interpreted his loves and his environment in an ever increasingly captivating way, drawing his audience into subjects which have alerted his attention and engaged his well practised eye.

In the esteemed contemporary company of Penang artist Sylvia Lee Goh, Malay expatriate Ali Rahmad and Perak’s superlative painter Yeong Seak Ling, Khoo Khay Tat is also a self taught artist.  He is untainted by the art school factory mill and able to develop his own unique style of work, independent of academy and artistic confinements - which he does with increasing style and panache.

From early in his career as an artist Khoo Khay Tat has presented stunningly graphic representations of Malay kampongs, he has studied nature and depicted hard working fishermen dragging water-logged weighty nets across dazzling beaches and superb watercolour images of his home town – Penang.  Trees, flowers, birds - all are captured in stunning detail, with mesmerising colour.

Yet Khoo Khay Tat’s acutely artistic eye does not only gaze upon Fishermen, nature and kampongs.  The artist has become noted for his evocative, yet sensitive, renderings of buildings, especially in his light, airy, watercolour creations which at once capture reality as it is presented but also hint at a re-captured past forever encapsulated in Khoo Khay Tat’s watercolour wash techniques, and skilled artist’s observation.  

The last few years have shown Khoo Khay Tat developing an immense love for oil painting as well as new directions for his watercolour, and acrylic work.  In many of his later oil canvases the artist has revealed a deep love of horses, especially through images of thundering thoroughbred mounts, their heels kicking dust as they pound toward the gallery visitor who is trapped, unable to take their gaze away from the race and the magnificent rushing animals. 

However, Khoo Khay Tat’s horses are not the docile mounts of Sir Alfred Munnings or the equestrian studies of George Stubbs, but a fine array of stunning images – naturalistic and fantastic, giving praise to all things equine.

As time canters past, the artist finds a greater fascination with horses of all kinds, be they the small Mongolian mounts in China, the fine Arab horses used for breeding or racing or horses of the imagination.  Horses in all styles spring from the artist’s diligent eye and practised hand, delighting those who gaze upon his works.

Over five decades Khoo Khay Tat has developed his artistic ability, formulated it to captivate as well as sooth his audience.  In this exhibition, coinciding with the artist’s seventy second birthday, he allows his gallery audience to luxuriate in a collection of some of his very best equine works, with a small sample of his other works and some of the artworks which inspire him. 

November/December Senses of Malaysia 2010

Postcards from Another Reality

Galeri Petronas, secreted on the third floor of the Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC),  reveals an exciting new exhibition.  It is the other worldly work of Penang artist Chan Kok Hooi displayed from 12^th October 2010 to January 9^th 2011.

That nugget, that little hidden gem of an exhibition, within the mainstay of the general Petronas Galleri is a small exhibition which is well named, tucked away, as it is, virtually out of sight. It belongs to one of Malaysia’s most exciting young artists – Chan Kok Hooi. It is the exhibition - I SEE(K) YOU.  To discover this gem the visitor has to negotiate an exhibition of landscapes, through a virtual maze and literally SEEK out the splendours of Chan’s painstaking detailed work, but it is well worth the effort.

It was to have been a much larger exhibition but it was necessarily shortened to make way for more work in the landscapes exhibition.  It some ways it was a cruel blow to the visitor, for Chan has been recognised for his talents across the world – recently London and Taiwan, soon Singapore and New York and for his home country to diminish his exhibition is somewhat short sighted. 

Within Chan Kok Hooi’s fascinating works there are gross elements of superb pictorial comedy embedded within the more recent works produced by that young master surreal fantasist.  While mostly appearing as decaying postcards, vague memories of perhaps a digital time lived, these works are snapshots of a world to one-side of commonplace reality, a land where the Asian version of the ‘Microsoft messenger’ icon lives along with his 3D icon family and 3D icon pets. 

 

We witness the humble lives of simple 3D icons, set in Asia – with ball heads, three dimensional triangular bodies and arms with no hands.  We frequently see typical Asian bathrooms, un-flushed Asian toilets, Asian hallways where family pictures hang from the walls as if to fall at any moment, family pets carrying other ball-headed creatures, young perhaps, abattoirs where captives are bound by microphone cord forced to perform into poised microphones amidst a backdrop of freshly killed carcasses, blood dripping into a plastic bucket.

There are murder scenes where liver-pocked ball-heads have their head staved in with a durian, their ghost seen exiting the body while a figure sits on the bed having watched TV until the channel closes.  More bathroom scenes, yet more bathroom scenes as we realise that the bathroom is central to life, the cleansing and excreting processes involved, enabling us all to get through the day of seemingly endless cubicles – ‘boxes little boxes ...and they’re all made out of ticky tacky, and they all look just the same’ with boringly repetitive computer screens.

It is a chess board.  The gallery floor is a chessboard.  As the figures in Chan Kok Hooi’s canvases are but pawns in some celestial chess game demonstrated by the black and white squares on many floors of the paintings, so to the gallery visitors move white square by tentative black square, to and fro, canvas to canvas.  I wonder if any of the many visitors to this show are aware of the delicate game they enter.

In one sense it would have been easier to replicate these images using computer generated imagery (CGI) or modelling programmes like Maya, 3ds Max, Carrara or even lightweight programmes such as Bryce 3D but no, Chan Kok Hooi chooses to deliberately and diligently paint his images with acrylic paints on various surfaces including, for this exhibition, jute.

Chan Kok Hooi is, as many talented and able people are, a quiet, humble man.  His day to day persona is the Clark Kent to his artist Superman, the more unassuming and modest the man seems so the artist in him makes imaginative leaps and creative bounds leaving us all breathless and wondering at this modern day super hero of a painter.  Like many modern Malaysian artists Chan Kok Hooi is beginning to be known, and appreciated, around the world.  His meticulous style of painting prohibits a rash of gallery openings, but the paintings that we, the viewing public, do come across are to be savoured for their intricate detail and painstaking work, barely revealing a brushstroke or the ‘hand’ of the artist.

This is the artist’s triumphant technique, and the final trick to capture the audience with his engaging works of art.  While the size of the works (often 122centimetres by 153 centimetres) baffles an entire audience expecting small postcards, and the computer monitor-like ‘buttons’ on the frame of each piece give a very 21^st century dimension to the images, that final illusion of the hidden artist’s hand completes the fantasy that we have stumbled upon postcards not from the edge, but from another reality - the secret life of the computer icon, or the day to day life of the chess pawn.

The exhibition I SEE(K) YOU by Penang artist Chan Kok Hooi is currently running at Galerie Petronas, 3 rd Floor Suria KLCC, Kuala Lumpur from 12^th October 2010 to January 9^th 2011.

Best of SOUTHEAST ASIAN EROTICA

And here it finally is, the hottest of all the hotties, fire hot sizzling chilli hot, plunging necklines and smooth smooth silky hot…….

Best of SOUTHEAST ASIAN EROTICA

Edited by Richard Lord 

Featuring my short story Awakening (p45)

Contributors (by country)

MALAYSIA

Amir Muhammad

Lee Ee Leen

Amirul B Ruslan

Yusuf Martin

INDONESIA

Suzanna Kusuma

PHILIPPINES

Annabel Pagunsan

Nigel Hogge

THAILAND

Stephen Leather

John Burdett

Andrew Penney

Erich R, Sysak

Brenton Rossow

SINGAPORE

Christopher Taylor

Dawn Farnham

Chris Mooney-Singh

Zafar Anjum

Alaric Leong

Our Country Right or Wrong

written for the forthcoming edition of sentAP magazine

video from the National Art Gallery made by Kamal Sabran

(Being a review of Zulkifli Yusoff’s National Art Gallery exhibition - Negaraku – Kuala Lumpur 26^th July to 26^th September 2010)

Negaraku translates as my country.  For Zulkifli Yusoff that is the freshly liberated country – Malaya into which he was born in 1962.  During August and September this year Zulkifli Yusoff’s latest exhibition reminded, revealed and suggested questions of what is ‘my’ country, that country to which we all relate uniquely, personally and individually.    

The exhibition - Negaraku was a timely revelation of what could only have been Zulkifli Yusoff’s singular country - his personal milieu.  In that exhibition the artist presented the country of his psyche, sometimes with nostalgia, sometimes with a crystal clear eye and mind.  It is the country of the artist’s past, where he had grown and the experiences which had, to some degree, shaped the artist’s reality coupled with those things which had been shared with others within that unique entity - formerly Malaya which, since September 16^th 1963, has been known as Malaysia.

The expansive and multi-layered exhibition straddled two galleries on the second floor of the Balai Seni Lukis Negara (National Art Gallery Malaysia) – Gallery 2A and Gallery 2B.

This was a well planned and crafted exhibition, presenting a variety of mediums, surfaces and imagery to keep the wandering visitor transfixed.  Large acrylic canvases fused two of Zulkifli Yusoff’s best known styles – the ‘printed’ flat (Pop Art) style and the energetic ‘expressionistic’ style, into a surprising delight of essentially black and white fully laden, and ultimately deeply symbolic, imagery.

Why black and white - I don’t think that it had anything to do with Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney’s ‘Ebony and Ivory’, Michael Jackson’s ‘Black or White’ or Subhash Ghai’s  film of the same title – or maybe it has to do with all three.  Perhaps it is because modern man is so conditioned to accept the viability of text and images if they are presented in black and white.  If it’s in the newspaper it must be true; there it is, we say – ‘spelled out in black and white’, it’s official, it must be right because it’s printed (and read [red]) there in black and white. 

Black and white, and of course sepia, are the colours of the past.  B/W represents those intimate days of radio broadcasts, before TV created passive zombies.  It is the colour of photographs, the colour of cherished memories, of past magazines in the days when the world was captured, for posterity, in lush black & white, or toned in that curious brown of sepia.  Zulkifli Yusoff re-presented us with the marvel which is black and white and presented the greater part of his exhibition in these colours of memory and nostalgia. 

We were informed, by a well placed black wall plaque with white text, that there were sub-headings for the exhibition.  They were Patriotism, Economy, Government (broadcasts), National flower and Peace – 5 sub-headings in all, incidentally mirroring the petals of the Bunga Raya – the national flower. 

To emphasise the overall point of nationhood and nostalgia, the exhibition ran over that period of time which incorporated both the Merdeka and Malaysia Day national celebrations, at a time when patriotism and nationalism is upper most in many people’s minds.  The exhibition was, perhaps, a thoughtful and thought provoking counter to the worse extremes of jingoism.

The visitor moved past the hoardings announcing the exhibition - now in red, black and white and into the first gallery.  It was there that the visitor encountered an installation of small print covered objects, reminiscent of those small collections by the American Surrealist Joseph Cornell; items neatly laid out in pleasing geometries, covered with print.  On one papered box a printed hand of bananas was neatly offset by a small (yellow) ribbon bow, on another the image of a bitter gourd, yet another a cut durian.  A paper and print covered wheelbarrow and two paper and print-covered, symmetrically placed child’s pull carts greeted the visitor with a calm, orderly vision setting out its wares in a carefully laid out display.  

On the walls, on small printed blocks there were names of companies, like Felda, engaged with agriculture and types of barely remembered rice, past and present– Malinja, Mahsuri etc.  Other wall blocks housed semi-3D imagery of fruit or prints of insects, fruit or vegetables.  The visitor was alerted to the danger of the nation’s agriculture being relegated to museums – where only representations of reality may survive in image form, the original long since perished leaving wayan kulit shadows playing in Plato’s cave.  The installation might have been titled ‘Memories of a rural past’, or ‘Boyhood in a rural setting’.

 We moved swiftly on to Kebun Pak Awang II (Uncle Awang’s Garden II ) linked by content but not by style to the former.  Kebun Pak Awang, many will recall, was the name of a popular Government radio programme, highlighting farmer’s problems, back in the 1970s. 

Kebun Pak Awang II was the first large black and white canvas in the exhibition.  The 244 x 366 cm canvas was dominated by a single phallic ear of sweet corn on the viewer’s left and images of bitter melons encased in a very feminine ellipse on the right.  If this were an Indian painting I would been talking about lingam and yoni.

That painting was a stunning piece, beautifully rendered.  Was it a wistful lament for missing fields of corn which once swayed adjacent to the kampongs under Malayan breezes - maybe.  Was there interplay between the corn - brought to this country by foreign settlers and the indigenous vegetable bitter melon – a thought that the exhibition visitor may have pondered.  Were we to read that corn plus bitter melon equals Malaysia being the child of foreign and the indigenous worlds combining, that is a thought.

Would I be naive to believe that the artist was alluding to radio broadcasts and his own controversial Professor Katak (frog) character from previous exhibitions, I wonder.  FYI - Bitter melon is known as peria katak in Malay.

There was something reminiscent of the Puerto Rican artist Rafael Tufino’s linocuts, about this painting, perhaps it was the strong black and white lines coupled with the obvious fondness for the rurality of the image and the starkness similar to linocuts.

A large part of Zulkifli’s exhibition was devoted to Malaysia’s national flower (since 28^th July 1960 that is) - the Chinese Rose Hibiscus (Hibiscus rosa sinensis), renamed the Bunga Raya.  Songs devoted to the flower are woven across paintings, while images of the hibiscus flowers occur on etching plates, screen processed images and their painted forms appeared and re-appeared across a number of canvases, boards and surfaces either in full bloom or in bud – nascent or pre-nascent. 

The multiplicity of hibiscus imagery begs the notion, and discourse, on the wanton use and misuse of imagery, thereby provoking endless conversations on the devaluing of one symbol, chosen out of a seven possible, to imbue national symbolism and therefore meaning into.

The Bunga Raya has come to be revered, amongst many other things, for its five petals representing the five principles of Malayan nationhood – Belief in God, Loyalty to King and Country, Supremacy of the constitution, Rule of law, Courtesy and Morality.  It is laden with significance, symbolism and injected with meaning and it is no surprise that there is a proliferation of hairdressers, tourist spots, island resorts et al, all proudly proclaiming to be Bunga Raya - alluded to in Zulkifli’s work Kedai Gunting Rambut.  

Popular 1960s songs (including those by M Noor and The Night Shadows etc) equated women to the Bunga Raya, unaware that the naming of things often reinterprets a symbol’s meaning.  I hear a little bird called Andrew singing and a Belgian proudly proclaiming that this is not a pipe.

The hibiscus pièce d résistance, for me, was the large painted canvas replete with giant hibiscus flower, painted left of canvas, exposing its stamen as a dalliance for its audience, while balanced by its potted sister on the viewer’s right.  The painting was a masterpiece, full of energy, vibrancy and gusto.  A nice gesture was ‘alif, lam, lam, ha (or Allah) painted in Arabic, top right of canvas, reminding the viewer who is responsible for the delicate beauty of the Bunga Raya. That essentially ‘floral painting’ took the concept of floral painting not just to a new level, but defied the concept of levels altogether – Georgia O’Keefe eat your heart out.

In other, more personal works, the audience was introduced to Zulkifli’s mother (through collage) and his teacher father.  The artist’s mother is represented through love hearts, scraps of 1960s radio, film and Wanita (Woman) magazines as well as Muslim readers and multiple images of Bougainvillea flowers under the title Koleksi Ibu (Mother’s Collection).  At the end wall of Gallery 2A, one board had a ‘positive’ image of the artist himself, in red on board, while a corresponding board held a ‘negative’ image of the artist’s father, the two images were separated by an expanse of wood with the words to Malaysian jingoistic songs carved into them - the three works were called - Aku, Ayah dan Lagu Patriotik (My father and a patriotic song).

Finally we came to peace, or were at peace, represented by collages and wall mounted CND ‘ban-the-bomb’ signs in tubular metal – reminiscent of bicycles.  Odd really that Gerald Holtom’s simple symbol, initially constructed out of the semaphore (flag signalling) letters N and D for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament should have such resonance around the world as a universal sign for peace, and in Malaysia too.

In a series of works, in his exhibition, Zulkifli used that CND logo accompanied by another universal symbol, or rather two.  Along with the CND sign Zulkifli used a hand sign universally acknowledged as being a sign for ‘peace’ – the two fingers rampant, palm outward, made popular by Winston Churchill.  But if the visitor were to observe very closely, some of those hand images were reversed, an indication not of the universal sign for peace but the aggressive, insulting, V sign said to have derived from British battles with the French, the showing of bowmen’s two fingers.

There was a, ceiling mounted, projected film in Gallery 2B, but sadly on the day I viewed the film was too bright against the wall and all that could be seen were flashes of white light.  Instead I listened to the dialogue and Kamal Sabran’s marvellous music.

 Within the historical narrative which has become Zulkifli Yusoff’s work, time has moved on from those days of Malaya from before the artists’ birth to the 1960s and 70s. Yes, it is the artist’s remembrances, it is his country – Negaraku, but it is also the country of all those who have lived there and/or continue to live there.  It is, to quote the often misquoted lines of Stephen Decatur’s sentiment - ‘our country, right or wrong’.