By Suraya Warden

Review: Chen Wei Meng’s Two Three Six at Wei-Ling Gallery

Lens-curvature panoramas of Terengganu: for all their stunning Malaysian-ness, these pieces also take you elsewhere, making it an ideal local exhibition. A quiet, talented artist and his new solo show.

by Yusuf Martin

Since Rafiee Abdul Ghani’s early works – Ingatan dari Gunung (Memory of Mountains -1985) and Green Park 4 (1993), an insightful care and concern for nature’s milieu has been self evident within the artist’s works.

by Alex Yong

Scratches and Dots: Joe Fleming, 14 May – 11 June 2009 @ Gallerie Taksu

Canadian-born painter/multimedia artist (everyone’s multimedia these days!) Joe Fleming’s solo exhibition at Galeri Taksu. ARTERI hearts painters, even if some of our commentors don’t. (We heart them too, and their bitchiness).

by Chi Too

There’s nothing like directing your first French film, which is the epitome of “serious” art house filmmaking. Produced specially for ARTERI, Chi Too’s Regardant La Peinture Secher (Watching Paint Dry) is humourously dedicated to the love of paint.

by Zedeck Siew

In the spirit of sharing:

If you are an observer in any capacity of the videogame industry, 2008’s Braid was hailed as a significant milestone for the games-are-art argument. It’s easy to see why: painterly visuals and ingenious, spare gameplay mechanics — which tie into the game’s primary meditation: time, or our longing to reverse past wrongs.

by Haseena Abdul Majid

There is a quiet sense of resignation to reality and dissatisfaction with chaos in Haslin Ismail’s recent exhibition Exorcismus Persona at RA Fine Arts. His surrealist approach covers various mediums, from painting, assemblage, mixed media, installations and handmade books.

by Alex Yong

Fathullah Luqman: Gerak Kilat
09 May to 23 May 2009 @ Pelita Hati’s House of Art

by Zedeck Siew

Finding myself at a loss one afternoon during the Umno general assembly, I decided to take a stroll through PWTC. I passed the entrance to Merdeka Hall, where speeches and sycophancy continued, rounded the corner – and, lo and behold, discovered a painting exhibition.

by Simon Soon

Mit Jai-Inn’s work is conscious about the history of painting in many ways. In a sense, there’s the utopian gesture that is paradoxically embedded in the destructive system of Mondrian’s oeuvre that Mit is unafraid to reference, using this goal as a way to explore a reductive style that transpires the nihilism of minimalist art and its subsequent absorption into high style furnishing.

By Eva McGovern

I love super heroes. As a child, instead of your average imaginary friends, I had the League of Justice. Superman, Wonderwoman and Batman were my closest allies in fighting crime in the living room. Good times.

by Yusuf Martin

There is an image refusing to leave my head. It’s of a youth, guitar in hand, kampung serenading. This iconic image, for me, represents all that is Malaysian, the serenity of idyll, the incumbent artistic muse and preponderance to nostalgia.

by Simon Soon

In our attempt at profiling some of the more unusual spaces around the region, and in the spirit of looking beyond the four walls of the gallery and museum (though not exactly beyond), I thought of bringing Thomas Kinkade’s Signature Gallery in Malaysia to our readers’ attention. I’m not entirely sure when the gallery opened in Malaysia, but I’m quite positive it has been around for more than a few years, having discovered it on one of my summer holidays back in Malaysia during my university days.

by Tanya Soong

It is possibly one of the art world’s big little ironies that one of the hardest hit country in Southeast Asia by the current economic crisis is playing host to 80s ‘neo-expressionist’ extraordinaire, Julian Schnabel, who led the charge in painting’s postmodern renaissance and whose seemingly soaring fame and ego was neutered by the financial meltdown of ’87.

by SHARON CHIN

Chuah Thean Teng passed away on 25 November 2008, just months before the opening of his retrospective at Balai. This makes the viewing of his works especially poignant, above and beyond the sense of nostalgia that runs throughout the show. I felt I was looking at a Malaysia I had never known: I can’t recognize myself in his scenes of pastoral kampung life, and the people he lovingly depicted at work, rest or play are strangers to me.