Here is a show that aims to catapult painting back to its former glory as number one of artistic practices, a spot it lost in the last century to various other mediums and objects: photography, sculpture, the human body, dried blood, taxidermic animals…

The curator, Yee I-Lann, enlists the help of three “damn good painters” to get the job done.

Armed with paintbrushes, canvases, cameras, projectors, and trusty curatorial brief, Gan Siong King, Hamir Soib, and Phuan Thai Meng attack. There is no blood, but there are some damn good paintings.

Expect to see. And, I mean this literally because the show challenges the very notion of seeing - both optically and cognitively. It’s a show that demands responses and kudos to the painters for these provocations. We like.

But, that is enough flirting. Let’s first consider some thoughts on the exhibition:

There is the obvious parallel to photography in the realism of some paintings. Phuan’s paintings of water pipes, for example, jut out towards you most vividly. In fact, if you stand in front of the very canvas, ignoring its parameters and the flatness of its surface, the paintings do an incredibly convincing job of masquerading as plumbing.

Cheekily, they are hung at unconventional heights. I spot gallery goers squatting to have a closer look at Phuan’s brushwork.  Memorably, Fragments of Development – Fact and Fake #1 (2008), is hung next to an actual water-pipe, giving further resonance to the painting’s already prompting title.

Then, there is the sheer scale of some paintings. Facing each other are Hamir Soib’s Kering (2008) and Phuan’s large piece depicting a vacant construction site, and, you are forced to navigate the space of the gallery to appreciate their entirety.

Flighty footwork is also necessary with The Black Ship (2008), Hamir’s mammoth monochrome painting, where the artist has manipulated the textural qualities of the medium. As your eyes glide across layers, folds and through the impasto, it’s possible to discern roaring waves, thundering skies and a ship charging through these violent forces. To see this, a number of viewpoints are essential and the choreography the viewer adopts mimics the artist’s very act of painting.

And so, the audience must squat, lean over, or, move closer to better see; the performative element is inescapable. It’s a tradition that harks back to mid-twentieth century painters, such as Jackson Pollock or Michel Tapié, and this connection to the past is interesting, for it refers to the period when painting last held its number one spot.

      

                                                Hamir Soib, The Black Ship, 2008

Do the paintings in this exhibition demand a reclassification of medium? Gan’s paintings would certainly justify such demands. Hyperrealist and impossibly clever, his are the thinkers’ paintings and displace traditional methods of seeing.

I walk past It’s… Show Time (2008), wodering when The Annexe had acquired a new clock, not noticing its hands are immobile and that it statically reads “8.30”. I’m not the only one fooled. Apparently someone had inquired whether Short (2007) and Long (2007) were wooden mounts to hang paintings, a reasonable conclusion considering the acute detail of the wood grain.

                                   
                                                        Gan Siong King, Short   (2007)

And, with methodological titles, such as, In Search of a New Malaysian Still Life, or, Q: Got Fire can ah? A: Can (2005) and Vanitas (2008) – both executed with bubblegum colours and an ironical poke at historical traditions within painting – it is evident that the artist is trying to make you see things differently, to question pre-existing notions of truth, and, to deconstruct rules within painting.

So, is the show any damn good? Yes. Please go see, it’s on until Sunday, 27 April.

~

Rachel Jenagaratnam is a free-lance writer.

Read Zedeck Siew's review of the same show on the Kakiseniblog.

The Painting Show ends on 27 April. For full event details, check out our events database here.