Meditative Movement; Chin Wan Kee 'Sculpturing is Meditative'

Pregnantly 1991

While Kuala Lumpur’s first art Biennale (2017) opens its doors to an inquisitive audience, the doors are beginning to close on an excellent exhibition of bronze figurines by Malaysian Institute of Art graduate Chin Wan Kee, and Senior lecturer at Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

The exhibition ‘Sculpturing is Meditative’, by Chin Wan Kee, at the National Art Gallery in Kuala Lumpur, at first glance seems the very opposite of traditional concepts of meditation. In meditation, one might presume an act of stillness, serene calmness, not the effervescent dynamism and vibrance of Chin’s figurines which erupt into graceful dances of shadow and light. Everywhere in that gallery the stuff of myth and dreams are narrated. Stories are whispered between the darkness of shadow and the traditional whiteness of the cube gallery.

The intrinsically meditative nature of Chin’s approach to his art seems embedded within art’s therapeutic embrace. It is not therapy, as such, but, perhaps, a mindful and spiritual ‘Focussing’ of the inner man upon the task he has set himself (as set out by American psychologist and philosopher Eugene Gendlin, in 1978). It is somewhat Buddhist in approach. Creating works of art, e.g. sculpturing, is an immersive process from beginning to completion. The mind must be focussed not just on concept, idea, structure and process but on the bringing together of the disparate elements within that act of creation, its completion, and the happy accidents along the path to the work’s fruition. The British artist Francis Bacon had this to say about happy accidents…

 ‘In my case all painting... is an accident. I foresee it and yet I hardly ever carry it out as I foresee it. It transforms itself by the actual paint. I don't in fact know very often what the paint will do, and it does many things which are very much better than I could make it do.’

However, Chin’s sculptures, in their own acts of being, become objects for meditation, as well as by-products of meditation. Chin’s figurine ‘Pregnantly’ (his small bronze from 1991), is holding our, the visitors’s, anticipations as we enter the gallery, expectant, full of our own subjective imaginings. These imaginings become reconfigured upon espying Chin’s wonders of solidified Chagallian dreams, his hints of Picasso’s Minotaurs and that torn, earth-bound, motif of a doomed Icarus. To this aged critic, Chin’s works seem to re-imagine European artists like Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall and the British artist Michael Ayrton. It is with the memory of Aryton’s acute renderings of the Greek mythos, of the doomed Icarus and his father Daedalus, that brings with it the insights into Chin’s intimations of ancient Greece, but resurrected here, within Ptolemy’s Golden Chersonese.

Chin, in his objects for meditation, be they derived from Cartesian (deus ex machina or cogito ergo sum) or Aurelian discourses, has make solid a plethora of man’s philosophical and psychoanalytical representations. Symbols, from birds and crescent moons to Dalíesque spindly-legged horses, grab our attention and lead us to smaller human figures which portray both the dance and the stillness of everyday life. This ‘glance’ is given through Chin’s metaphysical frames, and actual (bronze) frames, in works like ‘The Perplexed Soul’, 2014.

It is, perhaps, an ambiguity to talk about stillness and dynamism together, and yet good sculpture does just that. In the perpetual ‘frozenness’ of Chin’s meditative moments, caught forever in a Heideggerian ‘augenblick’ (or brief moment in time), the artist simultaneously presents the beauty of movement within the context of serenity, of a calm quietude . Action becomes stilled. Yet our eyes and minds are also pregnant with anticipation of the next moment, and the next in perpetuity. The be-winged ‘Icarus’ bronze (Dreamer, 2016) sets off to follow his dreams but, as his father Daedalus has warned, he mustn’t fly too close to the sun of his imaginings, lest he fall.

In the quieter moments of Chin’s ‘Beyond mind and the words series’, we see a laying bronze  figure (A Book with ‘TRUTH’, 2007), holding a book. Inside, the book is inscribed with ‘TRUTH’. A bird sits on the reader’s right knee. Chin appears to use birds as symbols of freedom (with knowledge comes freedom) within his figurines. It is natural to assume that the figure laying down may be reading about the concept of freedom, or escaping through the act of reading, hence achieving a form of freedom of his mind or, alternatively, looks not at the book, but beyond to his unseen cage, and aches for his freedom, provoked by the book.

In Chin’s catalogue, which accompanies the exhibition, the aforementioned Dalíesque spindly-legged horse (Wisdom, 2015, page 59), comes with the note ‘Wisdom is not dependent on the depth of your knowledge’. It is a common expression, perhaps rooted in Marcus Aurelius talking about the arrogance of supposed knowledge. In this bronze, Chin has a small man atop a golden horse with elongated legs. The seated man is, quite literally, looking backward instead of forward. Another man, below, seems perplexed with the action as he spread his hands, maybe shrugs. A bird flies from between the horses legs. The man is on his ‘high horse’, which in common parlance (derived from England circa 1380) means being in a position of power, remote and proud. In modern English being on a ‘high horse’ is now a term of derision. Chin’s seated figure is bent headed, thoughtful, if not woeful, perhaps in debate with the man standing. Freedom seems to be escaping the seated man, even though his haughtiness has seen to have dissipated. He has knowledge, but has been unable to use it wisely.

Much of Chin’s work is allegorical or metaphorical. It is steeped in mythos and ancient wisdoms. Chin’s narrative structures speak loud and clear from thoughtful bronzes, which are both by-products of his meditative approach to his art, and objects of mindfulness and are meditations in themselves. There is motion is Chin’s dialogues/narratives inherent in those enrapturing works, physical motion, frozen motion, caught within a series of Heideggerian ‘augenblicks’ as frozen moments.

In many respects, the show at Kuala Lumpur’s National Art Gallery is a retrospective, spanning twenty years (1997 - 2017) of the artist’s working life. They are, naturally, selected works, chosen to reveal the creativity of this master craftsman and to suit the gallery they are in. One benefit of a smaller, more intimate, gallery, is that light may be manipulated sufficiently to add the dimension of shadow play upon the walls, as it is for Chin’s works in this gallery, which is splendidly effect in revealing Chin’s meditative movement(s).

Wisdom, 2015