COLOUR, SHAPE, QUANTITY, SCALE
a solo art exhibition by Liew Kwai Fei
curated by Simon Soon and Vincent Leong
Opening Night: 12 June 2010 (Saturday), 8.00 PM
Date: 12 – 26 June 2010
Opening Hours: 12pm – 8PM (Tuesday – Sunday), closed on Monday
Venue: No. 15, Jalan Mesui, off Jalan Nagasari (Changkat BB area, next to No Black Tie), Kuala Lumpur
Liew Kwai Fei is recognised today as one of the most exciting new generation of abstract painters in Malaysia. Come this June 2010, he will present a new body of work in his fourth solo exhibition – COLOUR, SHAPE, QUANTITY, SCALE.
COLOUR, SHAPE, QUANTITY, SCALE continues to explore the language of abstract painting by situating the paintings of Liew Kwai Fei in dialogue with the exhibition space. This exhibition makes a radical departure from the usual experience of abstract art by displaying the paintings within a derelict town house instead of the white walls of a gallery. How will the paintings interact and play within a non-neutral space? How will the taint of history, of context, change the way we understand abstraction?
The exhibition will utilise the various rooms available in the townhouse, where audience will be able to walk into different spaces that will change the way they engage and experience a particular work of art.
The ‘live’ experience is central to this exhibition with Liew Kwai Fei prioritising the experience of being there to look at an artwork as an important component in the experience of painting. Divest of concrete meaning, rhetoric, textual inferences of the image, these paintings come to initiate an aesthetic encounter that evokes the unspeakable in moments of silent contemplation.
COLOUT, SHAPE, QUANTITY, SCALE reinvestigates the values of painterly abstraction in the tradition of Barnett Newman, Agnes Martin, Ellsworth Kelly in which the medium sought to declare feelings of openness, clarity and immediacy through abstraction instead of narrative and discourse.
How has this critical operation stood the test of time? What is its relevance to our day and age where the image is read primarily as text?
While abstract painting is often considered opaque and inaccessible to the general public, Liew Kwai Fei (b. 1979, Malaysia) has often challenged this notion by suggesting that there is always a playful, humorous and fun side to forms, colours and objects. In his second solo exhibition, The Rhythm of Doing, he punched holes into the gallery walls to create a series of abstract monuments reminiscent of towers and pagodas. For Bombay Sapphire Art Projects 2009, he arranged, using mirror tiles the entire length of Tang poet Li Bai’s paean to alcoholics, ‘Bring in the Wine’. In his last solo exhibition, he invited Simon Soon to write short stories corresponding to the various abstract paintings, that drew in personal histories and imaginations.
Liew Kwai Fei majored in Ink Painting at the Malaysia Art Institute. Since graduation, he has participated in a number of group exhibitions such as ‘3 Instalasi + 3@RAP’ A Preview of Installation Art and Drawings at Rumah Air Panas, Kuala Lumpur (2003), YOUQING – A Showcase of Ink Painting and Drawing at Rumah Air Panas, Kuala Lumpur (2004), and Al-kesah/Once Upon A Time in Malaysia at Map Art Space (2010). In 2003, Kwai Fei held his first solo exhibition titled ‘Fei’ at Rumah Air Panas, Kuala Lumpur which travelled to Le Bois Creation, Melaka. He also participated in the VASL International Artist Residency in Karachi, Pakistan in 2003.
