within darkened disorder, muse & reverie‌
HASLIN BIN ISMAIL
the wicked woman let out a curse _ ISBN 978 - 981- 07-2442 - 9 PAPERBACK
978 - 981- 07-2443 - 6 E-BOOK
MEME / KHAIRUL AZMIR BIN SHOIB
MEME / KHAIRUL AZMIR BIN SHOIB
b. 1975 taiping, perak
E D U C AT I O N
2006 Maya Art Gallery, Bangsar
2004 Master of Art, Fine Art and
Sculpture show, Gema Rimba gallery, KL WWF - Feed Me, Rimbun Dahan, Selangor Tribute to Jeri, National Art Gallery, KL Art Invitational, Bank Negara Malaysia, KL 2005 Artist’s Box, National Art Gallery, KL Miniature Art, Maya Art Gallery, Bangsar ART EXHIBITIONS Contemporary Metal, Maya Art Gallery, KL 2012 Locals Only, Taksu Gallery, KL Malaysia Open, National Art Gallery, KL Children’s Book Festival, Bologna, Italy Pop Culture, Maya Art Gallery, KL 2011 Contemporary watercolours, Figure in Paint, 2004 Young Contemporary Petronas Gallery, KL National Art Gallery, KL Here Today Gone Tomorrow, Rimbun Dahan 2003 Open Show, Shah Alam Gallery Artcage, Wei Ling gallery KL 2000 An Art Exhibition of Expression Entranced and Terrified by the Strange ‘Beautiful Selangor’, Shah Alam Gallery Women & Their Macabre Stories, Contemporary Islamic Art, National Museum, KL Taksu Gallery, KL, 3rd solo exhibition Untitled, Shah Alam Gallery Locals Only, Taksu Gallery, KL Doors of Creativity, Art and Design Centre, KL 2010 Picture Book Exhibition, Petronas Gallery KL Harmony, Art and Design Centre, KL Survival exhibition, Rimbun Dahan, Selangor 1999 Open Show, Shah Alam Gallery 2009 Post Gothic Dreams, RA Fine Arts gallery, KL Shah Alam Landscape Drawing Competition 2nd solo exhibition Miniaturization 2, Art Case Gallery, KL Iskandar Malaysia contemporary art show, Johor 1998 Open Show, Shah Alam Gallery Tanah Air, Rimbun Dahan, Selangor ‘Scream From Within’, Tangsi Gallery, KL Subliminary, Shah Alam Gallery ‘Nature’, Tangsi Gallery, KL Fantasy…Reality…Possibility, Art case gallery Miniature Art, Art Case Gallery, KL Channel 6, RA Fine Art, KL A.R.T, Maybank Gallery, KL Expressi Artistik, RA Fine Arts, KL ‘Cetusan Rasa’, Ipoh Museum, Perak 2008 The Unknown, RA fine arts gallery, KL 1997 Degree Show, UiTM - Identity Shifting Boundaries, Rimbun Dahan, Selangor ‘Form and Media’, Shah Alam Gallery Candy Coated Cute Confusion, Arts Alive Young Contemporary, National Art Gallery, KL Artspace, Launceston Tasmania, Australia 1996 Kenyir sculpture contest Tukar Ganti, Valentine Willie Fine art, SG ‘Journey’ by Suara Jiwa Group, Art with a Heart, Pavilion, Kuala Lumpur Perbadanan Muzium Melaka, Cabinet, Valentine Willie Fine Art, Bangsar Perzim Installation, UiTM 2007 0.15 Superstar, Rimbun Dahan, Selangor 1995 Flower Power, Bank Negara, KL Art Show, Valentine Willie Fine art, Bangsar Rakan Muda, FSSR, UiTM Filter, Wei Ling Gallery, KL Printmaking Workshop with Jejak, Galeri Nasional Indonesia Bill Morrow Jackson, UiTM Between Generation, 50 Years across modern Mini show ‘Suara Jiwa’ at Sultan Salahuddin art in Malaysia, UM and USM secondary school, Selangor 2006 Fairieality, Solo Art Exhibition ‘Suara’ art exhibition by Suara Jiwa Group, Maya Art Gallery, KL Shah Alam Gallery 10 Years, NN Gallery, Ampang, Selangor Ledakan, UiTM Closer, Miniature Show 1994 Academic Show, FSSR, UiTM
Technology, UiTM, Shah Alam 2000 Bachelor of Fine Arts, Hons. UiTM, Shah Alam 1997 Bachelor of Fine Arts, UiTM, Shah Alam
KUALA LUMPUR
SINGAPORE
BALI
17 Jalan Pawang 54000 Kuala Lumpur Malaysia T +603 4251 4396 F +603 4251 4331 kl@taksu.com
43 Jalan Merah Saga #01-72 Workloft @ Chip Bee Singapore 278115 T +65 6476 4788 F +65 6476 4787 sing@taksu.com
W Retreat & Spa Bali Jalan Petitenget Seminyak Bali, Indonesia T +62 361 4738106 F +62 361 4738104 bali@taksu.com
HASLIN BIN ISMAIL E D U C AT I O N
2007 B.A.(Hons) in Fine Arts
Universiti Teknologi MARA, Selangor 2005 Diploma in Fine Arts Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malacca AWA R D S
2011 Grand Prize Winner, Bakat Muda Sezaman 2010, Balai Seni Lukis Negara, KL Rimbun Dahan 17th Residency Program, Rimbun Dahan, Selangor 2010 Winners Visual Art Award (VAA), Starhill Gallery, KL The Winner of Visual Art (Painting) category, Selangor Young Talents’ Award, PJ, Selangor 2009 Finalist of MEA Award 2009 (Malaysia Emerging Artists), Soka Gakkai Malaysia (SGM), KL 2007 Finalist of Pact Max Malaysian Art Awards, Foodloft Art Gallery, Penang 2006 Grand Prize Winner, In-Print Competition, National Art Gallery, and was awarded a grant from the British Council and Scotland’s Robert Gordon University to study printmaking at Gray’s School of Art and Design for 2 weeks Merit Prize, 1st Putrajaya National Watercolour Competition, National Art Gallery 2000 Consolation Prize, Formula Malaysia. SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2012 Within Darkened Disorder, Muse and
Reverie… The Wicked Women Let Out A Curse (2 Man Show with Meme), Taksu Gallery, KL Songsang, Chandan Gallery, KL Ghost in the Shell, Rimbun Dahan 17th Residency Programme, Rimbun Dahan Gallery, Kuang, KL Locals Only, Taksu Gallery, KL 2011 Figure In Paint, Petronas Gallery, KL Utopia (2 Man Show with Chee Way), Wei-Ling Gallery, KL RTF(X), Light Editions Gallery, Singapore
TAKSU is a leading contemporary art gallery and specialist in Southeast Asia. Representing selections of fine art with distinctive urban edge, we are at the forefront of contemporary art in this region. TAKSU works to forge a platform for established and emerging artists to share their pool of creativity and knowledge through its residency programs and exhibitions. Encapsulatingthe true meaning of the word TAKSU; divine inspiration, energy, and spirit. Suherwan Abu Director, TAKSU Galleries
b. 1984, bukit gambir, muar, johor
2011 Sequential Narrative, Chandan Gallery, KL
Kedai Runcit no.12, Art Stage Singapore, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore 2010 Bakat Muda Sezaman 2010, National Art Gallery, KL 14th Asian Art Biennale Bangladesh 2010, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy ABC (Antara Bahan Campur), National Art Gallery, KL Young Malaysian Artists - New Object[ion], Petronas Gallery, KL Paperworks : Marks and Trails of Artistic Minds, Chandan Gallery, KL Combines! A Tribute to Rauschenberg, Taksu, KL 2009 Dazed in Mazes (4 man show), Valentine Willie Fine Art, Bangsar, KL MEA Award 2009, Soka Gakkai Malaysia, KL UN-CUT 09 Malaysian Paintings, Malaysian Arts Festival, Gallery Shambala, Denmark (Solo Exhibition)-‘Exorcismus Persona– Windows into the Fantasy Worlds of Haslin Ismail’, RA Fine Arts Gallery, Ampang, KL 2008 Tradition Into Modernity, The 6th afa- Asia Fiber Art Exhibition, Bentara Budaya Jakarta Friction (2 Man Show with Ilham Fadli @ Kojek), Kebun Mimpi Gallery, Bangsar, KL Mea Culpa, RA Fine Arts Gallery, Ampang, KL Locals Only, Taksu Gallery, Ampang, KL Young & New: Part 1, HOM (House of Matahati) Gallery, Ampang, KL 2007 Mana Batik, Annexe Gallery, KL Pact Max Malaysian Art Awards, Foodloft Art Gallery, Penang Segitiga, Degree Show, Tuanku Nur Zahirah Art Gallery, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam 2006 Enchanting Watercolour, Malaysian Watercolours National Art Gallery PERFORMANCES
2010 Performance art with Sosound at the Selangor
Young Talents’ Award ceremony, PJ, Selangor
2008 (M.E. is Mother Earth) - Project Mending Sky,
a group performance art collaborated with Asean young artists, Asian Civilizations Museum, Singapore
All rights reserved. No part of this brochure may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior consent from the artists and gallery. Artworks and Images © 2012 Meme & Haslin Bin Ismail Editor Theresia Irma Essay Rachel Jenagaratnam Photography Zahri Azizis & Haslin Ismail Catalog Design Jeffrey Lim / Studio 25 Printer Unico Services
HASLIN BIN ISMAIL
no.
28 / ink on paper / 37 x 25.5 cm / 2012
no.
29 / ink on paper / 37 x 25.5 cm / 2012
HASLIN BIN ISMAIL
no.
30 / ink on paper / 37 x 25.5 cm / 2012
no.
31 / ink on paper / 37 x 25.5 cm / 2012
HASLIN
muse and reverie
/ ac ry l i c , o i l pas t e l , pa p e r c o l l ag e , a n d
BIN ISMAIL
textile collage on canvas on plywood / 213 x 152 cm / 2012
HASLIN BIN ISMAIL
within darkened disorder
/ ac ry l i c o n c a n vas / 1 2 2 x 1 5 3 c m / 2 0 1 2
stranded
/ ac ry l i c o n c a n vas / 1 6 0 x 1 4 0 c m / 2 0 1 2
R A C H E L J E N A G A R AT N A M
1
Both artists graduated from UiTM, and they are also former mentor and mentee.
2
In 2006, Haslin conducted his practical training with Meme, exploring clay sculptures with his mentor, once a week.
3
Conversation with the artist at taksu, may 5, 2012.
Khairul Azmir Shoib @ Meme and Haslin Ismail take a cue from the world of fantasy and the imagination. Their works are firmly rooted in fictional and unfamiliar lands, and are far-flung from the sociopolitical realities that many of their fellow artists are conveying 1 in their art. In this two-man show, they come together to champion their cause, bringing adult fantasy – a subject that’s typically seen in graphic novels or films and savoured by a niche audience – into the art gallery, and consequently, our temporal world too. The artists’ shared goal this time around was how to bring the elements of darkness into the light, considering the fact that they both often deal with macabre 2 and surreal themes. And the title of the show – an amalgamation of titles of works from both artists – is evidence of their love for fantastical forms of storytelling. But whilst they come as a pair, their works should still be read individually. Haslin, for one, continues along the same path he ventured for Ghost in the Shell, his last solo that marked the end of his residency at Rimbun Dahan. The ink drawings that the artist proffered back then make a comeback (their titles indicate a sequence – drawings #28, #29, etc.), and again, humans and machines lie at the core of his works. This time, however, the artist’s fictional robots have been bestowed with more emotion and character. “They are more personal,” says Haslin, and endowing these machines with human characteristics is an attempt to question the possibility of human-built robots that boast the emotional and mental 3 capabilities of their creators. You’ll see this indicated in the details, as Haslin has now focused on specific elements of machine parts and the like. Emotion is conveyed through more elaborate rendering than in his previous works, and more intense shading gives his works a heightened illusion of reality; rather than solid, flat blocks of colour, these details imbue his subjects with a touch of realism, an element of truth, and some semblance of life. Aside from this, Haslin’s love for paper once again prevails. Books, a medium that he has been using for the last couple of years, have been deconstructed and reconstructed with a sensibility that is inherited from American artist Brian Dettmer, and the titles of the old books that the artist has accumulated from secondhand bookstores in Petaling Jaya correspond to his preferred themes of science fiction, anatomy, and the unusual. A book on monsters, for instance, gets turned into an epic scene where strange creatures literally pop out of the pages. There are also strong juxtapositions in these paper creations; there is the fusion of the old and new, contrasts between the softness of each old page and the sharp incisions made by the artist, the right and the left brain (the scientific and the artistic), light and shadow, recess and relief, and biomorphic shapes versus geometric lines. There is one more juxtaposition apparent in these works: the simultaneous presence of the books’ original authors and its new author. However, Haslin acknowledges that he is merely a collaborator; the marks he makes on each book isn’t an act of destruction, but a reevaluation by giving them new forms and new life, as they leave the bookshops and venture into art galleries. Not only that, Haslin not only collaborates with the likes of unknown authors, but also big names like Bram Stoker or Mary Shelley by capturing the ethos of their texts in his works. Take the artist’s cut-out skeleton that lies statically in taksu like an anthropological exhibit. It harks back to classic science fiction titles like Dracula, giving Haslin the chance to play mad scientist, an artistic Dr Jekyll that brings Frankenstein creations to life. In this light, aren’t all artists mad creators of sorts? Scientists with brush and canvas, mixing paint concoctions and creating new creatures and objects? Meme’s works certainly have that quality, as new characters burst forth from his drawings, and from his mind. Oftentimes strange and otherworldly, Meme’s creatures are distant descendents of characters from the Brother’s Grimm and even storytellers like Tim Burton. Indeed, the former has been an influence on a batch of the artist’s drawings in this exhibition; Meme was reading Snow White in particular, and this provenance is referenced by texts in the drawings – ‘Who is the fairest of them all?’ reads one, and another features the classic line ‘Red as blood, white as snow’.
K U A L A L U M P U R , M AY 2 0 1 2
Meme’s text and image compositions boast the quality of pages from illustrated books, though there is one constant throughout both the artist’s drawings 4 and his larger works – the female protagonist. Female characters play a leading role in Meme’s works. In Verasuk, she is a lonesome, archetype (anima) creature that symbolizes the artist’s projection of an ideal woman, and one paper clay doll represents the manifestation of this sort of character in 3d. There’s even the artist’s observations of femininity and womanhood, as seen in Thousand Years, a portrait of a woman with creatures forking out from the top of her head, and textures and details emphasized by the use of old fabric in place of the traditional blank canvas. Apart from the reference to Snow White, the narrative in Meme’s works are scattered and standalone (not all have direct links between one another). And also intentional was the attempt to create works that appeared unfinished – like an incomplete sentence that requires the reader’s involvement to continue the story, much like that perennial fairy tale introduction of ‘Once upon a time…’. Instead of creating barriers for the reader, Meme notes that he has placed his focus on the processes behind his works; the artist examines them from the beginning, middle, and end – much like the creation of a story – and notes that each possesses its own uniqueness. More significantly, however, there’s a deep-rooted sense of the personal embedded in Meme’s works; the artist has recently faced difficult and dark passages, and the artworks have acted as a form of therapy and “a perfect dark world”, where the 5 artist can breathe freely and where his strange, mythical creatures keep him company. Like Haslin, some of Meme’s works have been resurrected from his past. Necroticism, for example, combines old drawings from the artist’s student days under the tutelage of figurative artist Amron Omar, whilst later additions in the work show a clear progression in his style – individual, distinct, and emblematic of his current practice. The female subject that’s central to this work can be seen as a symbol of this development; she cuts a stoic, classical sight on the left, but an altar ego seems to project from her head, with more stylized features and her gaze facing our direction. All this radiates a sense of theatricality, from the costumes and characters that feature in both artists’ works, as well as the sense of make-believe that emanates from their art. The site of their fiction, taksu, even turns into a set-of-sorts for their works and interventions; the gallery’s walls will feature drawings by both artists, an act that Meme first experimented with in a previous showing at the gallery in 2011, whilst a song by Sigur Ros will be playing during the opening to set an atmospheric mood 6 for these images, just as it did when Meme was producing his works for the show. But at the very core of it all, this crusade to drive adult fantasy headfirst into the land of contemporary art can be summed up quite simply – that it harks back to purer times, and to an innocence that’s definitive of childhood. On creating his works for this exhibition, Meme even admits that there’s been less pressure this time round; “this time, there hasn’t been that pressure, and at the end, the sense of enjoyment has 7 been more important”. Is this an indication that both artists are attempting to return to innocence and a form of art that isn’t hindered by market demands or philosophical interrogations? An art that’s pure, just like when a child draws on the walls with crayons much to the chagrin of the parents? (In Haslin and Meme’s case, the gallery?). In an earlier essay for one of this exhibition’s artists, I suggested throwing caution to the wind as a method of reading his works. I truly believe that the same 8 advice applies again. Both artists haven’t set out to proselytize on worldly problems or to offer inquisitions into our lives, but they’ve crafted a world for us to retreat to, one that they experience almost daily, and know to be more magical and beautiful than our own. To understand and appreciate their art, it’s safe to say that we have to abandon our realities and to let our imaginations soar. Let the artists guide you with their flair for fantasy, and let Haslin and Meme lead you from the darkness and into the light.
4
Coincidentally, Meme has published a children’s book.
5
6
In an e-mail sent on may 6, 2012, the artist stated the following: “It was a long journey that ended up killing everything that I was suppose to believe in with regards to the past. The past equals pain and the future is dark. The story has to continue though, because that is the only way that you can deliver your thoughts; dispatch the last alarm, hand out the last few charms. The artwork acts as a form of therapy and it’s a perfect dark world. The world where I can breathe, a world where the dark creatures become your friends”.
Music plays a large role in the production of Meme’s works; the artist’s images are often visual
7
Conversation with the artist at taksu, may 5, 2012.
8
Rachel Jenagaratnam, ‘The art of Haslin Ismail’, Ghost in the Shell exh. cat., Rimbun Dahan, Kuang, february, 2012.
MEME / KHAIRUL AZMIR BIN SHOIB
necroticism
/ mixed media on canvas / 195 x 138 cm / 2012
MEME / KHAIRUL
thousand years
/ mixed media
AZMIR BIN SHOIB
on fabric / 63.5 x 76 cm / 2012
MEME / KHAIRUL
a s e r i e s o f g r i m m f a i ry ta l e s d r aw i n g
/ mixed
AZMIR BIN SHOIB
media on paper / 92 x 43 cm framed / 2012
/ mixed media on wood / 145 x 24 cm / 2012
lost in you / mixed media on paper / 200 x 70 cm / 2012
left; darkthrone
right;
MEME / KHAIRUL AZMIR BIN SHOIB