Enigmatic/Absorbing visions of Rafiee Ghani

Moonshine 2011

‘The State of awareness of visions is not one in which we are either remembering or perceiving.  It is rather a level of consciousness at which we experience visions within ourselves’ Oskar Kokoschka (1886 – 1980), originally delivered as part of a lecture in Vienna, 1912.

Three things become abundantly clear when you witness the artworks of Rafiee Ghani.  The first is the artist’s love for the environment, the second is the artist’s unwavering love for colour and the third is the artist’s inimitable vision of his world. 

It has been clear since Rafiee Ghani’s early works - including Ingatan dari Gunung (Memories from the Mountain -1985) – shown at Pameran Bakat Muda Sezaman 85 (Young Contemporaries 1985), that these loves – environment, colour, vision have teased Rafiee to wander down some very exciting artistic pathways, and sometimes into ‘The Painted Garden’.  

In Rafiee’s works, sometimes, it is the colour sculptured figurative which takes dominance, sometimes it is the artist’s fascination with colour abstraction and sometimes – like in these latest works, it is a delicate and exciting fusion of both the figurative and the abstract - fulfilling the artist’s own unique vision, which delights and excites us.

Hermann Bahr reminds us that ‘The history of painting is nothing but the history of vision – or seeing.  Technique changes only when the mode of seeing has changed; it only changes because the method of seeing has changed’ (written in 1914 and published in Expressionismus, Munich, 1916).  Of course our relation and reaction to sensory data changes both chronologically and experientially and we would, naturally, expect that an artist and an artist’s work would also change over time and through experiences. 

The French philosopher Maurice Merlleau-Ponty, in the Phenomenology of Perception, makes the point that ‘...had we not eyes, or more generally senses, there would be no painting at all for us, yet the picture ‘tells’ us more than the mere use of our senses can ever do’ (p389, Colin Smith English translation, England, 1962).  Both time and experience effect the recording of the ‘vision’, and the end result – the painting, in this case Rafiee Ghani’s paintings, are more than their summation, imbued not just with paint on canvas but with all that the artist has to give of himself, his experiences, skill, his vision of his world and his internal vision.

Over the last few years Rafiee Ghani, on his artistic journey, has steadfastly worked towards a delicate melding of line and colour, figurative and abstract, symbol and metaphor.  The combinations of these attributes presents Rafiee’s viewer with sometimes complex narratives which weave symbolic fantasies reminiscent of artists like the French painter Odilon Redon, coupled with a vibrancy of colour sense and a gusto gleaned from Rafiee’s excitement with the pulsating works of Dutch master painter Vincent Van Gogh.

The astute viewer might want to add the Austrian abstract Expressionist artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser to that list of artists we are reminded of when coming close to the works of Rafieee Ghani for, increasingly, there is a playful, colourfully organic feel to Rafiee’s newer works.

Beach Drive 1 2011

Already, in the Rainbow Warrior exhibition - Kuala Lumpur, 2010, those organic elements were bubbling through with paintings such as Ali’s Wonderland (2009), The Piano Beach (2009) and in the pockets of surf graced with butterflies in Blue Butterfly Beach (2008).  Those playful organic elements are more in evidence in these latest landscape works, specifically the stunning Beach Drive 1, Beach Drive 2, Beach Studio 1, Beach studio 2, Wetlands, Kashmir 1 and Kashmir 2 - all finished in 2011.  Those few dazzling works echo the excitement and intensity of a Van Gogh, or even a Monet, but are ultimately all Malaysian and all uniquely Rafiee Ghani, right down to the two pods of green Petai laying strewn in Beach Studio 2. 

The figurative is not forgotten, but plays its part in the miasma, dream, vision as demonstrated in The Wait and Moonshine – both, incidentally featuring an enigmatic woman, head crocked, gazing in remembrance and expectancy, perhaps waiting for her lover, or maybe overseeing the small, thoughtful boy who inhabits so many of Rafiee’s later canvases including Baywatch 01 (2008), Beach at 10 (2008) The Calligrapher (2008) and Overslept (2011). 

 

Monet Woman with Parasol

In the canvas Moonshine (2011) Rafiee depicts the light of the full moon falling on a seated woman.  In the moonlight she holds a red umbrella and, in holding that umbrella, brings to mind all those Impressionists and post-impressionist paintings which were so enamoured with ladies holding umbrellas – Claude Monet’s Woman with a Parasol (1875) or Eugene Boudin’s Woman with a Parasol on the Beach (1880) perhaps, or there again Pierre Auguste Renoir’s Woman with a Parasol and Small Child (1874/76).  There is an irony, for many of the Impressionists of the West looked towards the East for inspiration, specifically to the woodblock Japanese prints of artists like Toyokuni III otherwise known as Kunisada (1786 – 1865) or the great Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 – 1858).  In Moonshine Rafiee returns those images of women with umbrellas back to the East.

The beloved boy, seen in some previous outings of Rafiee’s works, is man as boy and acts as boy as proto-man exuding a certain pensiveness, drenched frequently in colour amidst a sun-kissed landscape.  In Baywatch 01, the young boy squats on a very Van Gogh yellow beach – also a reference to a previous painting – Yellow Wind Coming (2008).  In the Baywatch painting a drawn-out shadow indicates that the sun is at the boy’s back.  A yellow car, now forgotten in play, rests to one side of the boy as he sits with his hands upon face.  There is a brief question mark - is that car, beside the boy, Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi (circa 1970)? Will we allow ourselves to be teased by Rafiee into considering the destruction of the rainforests by loggers, by Palm Oil plantations and all manner of ills such as malls and areas for parking as we silently sing ‘They paved paradise and put up a parking lot’?  Well, perhaps.

The Calligrapher 2008

A boy – is it the same boy, sits with his legs akimbo on a beach in the painting - The Calligrapher (2008).  This painting amply illustrates Rafiee Ghani’s love of both form and colour.  The boy’s back is towards the sea, which is caught and inflamed by the setting sun and instantly reminds you of Paul Claudel’s description of poetic colour.  Colour drapes the boy and gives him form, picked out in shades of grey and green.  His orange (Crocs) shoes compliment the greenness of the boy, the cooked-salmon-pink of the sand and the mesmerising Istanbul-blue of the boy’s shadow.  On the sand, in the cool blueness of the shadow, is the practised calligraphy of the boy as he tries to get to grips with his Jawi (Islamic script) learning.  The boy concentrates on his writing – the light of the sun is at his rear but the light of his recognition seems yet to appear.

Beach at 10 (2008) sees the boy stretching – callisthenics or sleepy stretching, we don’t know, but the figurative element of the boy draws the viewer’s attention to him as he stands proud amidst an ever increasingly abstracted background.  In Overslept (2011) the boy reclines - part figurative part abstract himself, not yet fully awake to become completely a part of the figurative world, but resides still in the dreamy, organic abstracted world, which may, or may not be the real world.

While Rafiee’s colour draped neo-Expressionistic figures may appear, at first glance, to be pensive, pondering, thoughtfully watchful or dreamily wistful, his landscapes, or more correctly his colour-scapes, are buoyant, vibrant and as wonderfully effervescent as any Der Blaue Reiter Franz Marc or 1908 Wassily Kandinsky.

Rafiee Ghani does nothing if not excite.  He wets our visual appetites for more stimulation and sets about stirring a virtual visual orgasm of colour and form within us.  Rafiee is a natural born colourist.  He absorbs form, colour and shade nuanced by experience from his frequent travels.  But as far as he travels Rafiee always returns to his homeland to reveal his country’s passion, beauty and vibrancy.   In his feel for abstraction, Rafiee emphatically reveals the sumptuousness of his country – Malaysia.  That country is revealed as being forever a feast - a banquet, a ‘High Tea’ buffet for you to take your fill at.  The luxuriant bounty is seemingly an open ended basket, a cornucopia where everyone may dig deep and feast upon the delicious fruits, but in his wisdom Rafiee also reminds his viewers that the basket must be cared for, nurtured, for it to remain bountiful lest, one day, the bounty should cease.

Oscar Grillo Seaside Woman 1980

Occasionally enigmatic but always absorbing, Rafiee’s latest works burst into the viewer’s consciousness with all the energy, colour and zest of an Oscar Grillo (Kia Ora and Seaside Woman) animation.  Rafiee Ghani’s works echo Hari Raya, Deepavali, Christmas and Chinese New Year, in so much as they are celebrations, not just of country but ultimately of life, nature and of a consciousness with that ability to appreciate all the former.

Ultimately it is just not enough to stand once before these breath-taking works.  Difficult enough as it is to tear yourself away, there is a compulsion to re-visit, over and over again so that you may fill your senses with Rafiee Ghani’s visionary song of colour, light and shade which emanates from these extraordinary works.  These tints and shades, these melded artworks will fill your life with colour and, when away from them, their freshness of colour will grace your consciousness until your return and then your eyes are opened once again to that visual melody giving you, the viewer, paroxysms of delight to be once more face to face with Rafiee Ghani’s works.