L I V E L E A K Y E O H C H O O K U A N

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1 L I V E L E A K YEOH CHOO KUAN

2 LIVE LEAK Yeoh Choo Kuan 5-21 January 2017

ARTIST STATEMENT Referencing the footage of violent events from around the world found on the Internet, this series of paintings explores the encounter and exposure of violence that occurred through

3 ARTIST STATEMENT Referencing the footage of violent events from around the world found on the Internet, this series of paintings explores the encounter and exposure of violence that occurred through mass media. Continuing from my previous interest and exploration on fleshing abstraction - a term I coined to describe the manipulation of layered paint which is executed in violent painterly gestures, this series was inspired by the dramatic visual approach of purely aestheticized violence found in movies and the cinema and moving on to the depiction of the harsh reality of incidents in real life that filtered through the media. Materially, I have further developed the series in which I have prepared the box frames through spray painting its internal surface to provide a atmospheric element to the paintings that are installed within. This also serves as a context to suggest the simultaneous distance and connection between the digital evidence and the viewer while providing a vulnerable metaphorical space on and off screen. To contrast on the romantic and realist approach on the portrayal of violence in works in my previous solo exhibition and recent paintings, both series of work consistently reveal the autonomy of violence as a relevant subject that has been widely engaged within the modern media and public communication of our time. Yeoh Choo Kuan

4 TRANSMISSIONS AND LEAKS Ong Jo-lene Entering the room of Live Leak, one is surrounded by an electrifying sight of nine uniform quadrilaterals covered in vivid colours sullied by sepulchral layering that appear to form a line of witnesses to some unknown violence. Each canvas is caked with a muck of aggression, heavy with scratches and cuts over layers of oil paint, and set within a larger frame sprayed with an airy mist of lacquer, punctuated at the bottom of the frame by the dripping and curling ejections fleshed out from the canvas. As if the viewer must make a choice between taking pleasure in the order and beauty of the sight or taking ethical responsibility to consider the violence behind it in between each of these bodies of lightness and weight. Central to the inquiry of Yeoh s practice is the human experience and a psychological perspective with emphasis on the study of the whole person. For some years now, Yeoh has been exploring abstraction and minimalism, further developing the self-coined fleshing abstraction methodology. The cutting into and stripping away of layers of paint on canvasses form the core gesture of this method, evoking literal and metaphorical connections to human experience of pain and even pleasure. Over time, the human figure has become increasingly absent in his paintings and what surfaces are meditations on human emotions and sensations through the affective presence of the tactile testaments of physical markings. In his first solo exhibition In The Flesh, Yeoh anthropomorphised the canvas to present an allegorical meditation on violence in films, choreographed scenes of realistic but fictional pain and aggression that affectively occupy our imagination of human relationships. In the accompanying essay, Yeoh stated that in a process of moving away from pictorial narrative to the incomprehensible, his exploration of body politics has resulted into the canvas to accrue human qualities.

5 In this second solo exhibition, he moves away from aestheticised violence to images of reality violence in documentaries, taking into consideration issues of mediatisation of violence, authorial control and our prurient consumption of such images. His approach to fleshing abstraction in Live Leak embodies the un-choreographed and un-theatrical within these amateur citizen journalist videos. Yeoh watched copious hours of videos from the site and later recalled the affecting spectacles into his gestures, choice of colours, and finally marking it with a timestamp as title as a way of mirroring how these videos become a part of writing history and our consciousness. The construction of Live Leak, which takes its exhibition title from the controversial video sharing website of gore and violence, Yeoh interpellates the viewer as witnesses and consumers of the violence of our times. In Regarding The Pain of Others, Susan Sontag astutely recognises that being a spectator of calamities taking place in a far away place is a quintessential modern experience, the cumulative offering by more than a century and a half s worth of professional, specialised tourists known as journalists, established today by our casual ownership of a mobile recording device and internet access. Perhaps there is more than just curiosity driving our desire to stop and look at the horrific and the gore afflicting others. Wars are becoming living room sights and sounds, it is now the fifteen-second video that we scroll through our hand held device in bed, at the dinner table, and the bridge to the lull in our real life conversation. If it bleeds, it leads says the venerable guideline of tabloids and twenty-fourhour headline news shows to which the response is, compassion, or indignation, or titillation, or approval, as each misery heaves into view, often fleeting and ending in inaction, safe for a few we think of as activist types. And here we are at a contemporary art exhibition depicting the violence of times, cognisant of the tragic and relevant subject-matter while simultaneously apprehends the formal of line, colour, and space. Of course, this is not unique to this particular exhibition, but rather a quandary of contemporary art. Shock images no longer shock us, as Sontag observed, we see the pain of others, but we do not feel the pain of others. Websites such as Live Leak allow for the congregation and the wide and instantaneous dissemination of citizen journalism recordings of crimes, accidents, and even war and genocide that are saturated with images of mutilated limbs, blood, and dead bodies. While as with any image there is the question of what is excluded from the frame and particular vantage point from which it is recorded, these user generated videos captured by ordinary people not unlike ourselves who chanced upon the scene are viewed as reality, captured as-is, is deemed more authentic than news reports that may be subject to the machinery of propaganda and censorship of the powers that be. We are assailed by a constant stream of realistic images photography and video of the misfortunes and suffering of others, often at the hands of another, from the freakish and disgusting to the downright gruesome and criminal. The constant stream of images of violence on the multiple screens we hold close in our everyday lives draw emotional responses that we disconnect from in order to continue being productive our own reality. If the realistic imagery of photography and video has somewhat lost a facet of its power in its proliferation, what then can the looking at arts offer? Certainly every era has its depictions of violence in visual and material culture. Artworks do not present an objective account, abstract expressionism is even harder to define and locate, as the words in the name suggests. What can be said though is that abstraction is the form which is obtained through this process and can be presumed to be the essence of the subject or material. Paint, an innocent material, has been called upon and muddled through insistent emotional qualities to express human pain. What is transmitted to the digital screen is but the final moment of impact, the eruption of tensions and a string of actions leading up to it which is never visible within that frame. Yeoh s process slows down and elucidates time, every mark is the imprint of a human gesture, every skein of paint is the residue and ricochet of that gesture, collected in a frame outside the frame. Perhaps through challenging the monster that is speed and instantaneity, by giving credence to time, cause and effect, and looking backwards, so that we can look forward to being pained and the recoil of strive to abolish the causes of this havoc and carnage with the time we hold in our hands. Notes Haffendi Anuar, The Anthropomorphised Canvas, Richard Koh Fine Art, 2014 Susan Sontag, Regarding The Pain of Others, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003

6 ARTWORKS

7 07:57 Oil on canvas and lacquer spray on custom wooden frame 140 X 118 cm

8 04:12 Oil on canvas and lacquer spray on custom wooden frame 140 X 118 cm

9 03:52 Oil on canvas and lacquer spray on custom wooden frame 140 X 118 cm

10 02:52 Oil on canvas and lacquer spray on custom wooden frame 140 X 118 cm

11 01:48 Oil on canvas and lacquer spray on custom wooden frame 140 X 118 cm

12 01:11 Oil on canvas and lacquer spray on custom wooden frame 140 X 118 cm

13 01:02 Oil on canvas and lacquer spray on custom wooden frame 140 X 118 cm

14 00:45 Oil on canvas and lacquer spray on custom wooden frame 140 X 118 cm

15 00:27 Oil on canvas and lacquer spray on custom wooden frame 140 X 118 cm

16 Yeoh Choo Kuan Yeoh Choo Kuan (b. 1988, Malaysia) lives and works in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His work constitutes a unique synthesis of disintegrating working method, known for his self-coined Fleshing Abstraction, a process that focuses on the characteristics of color, texture, surface and construction materials. Choo Kuan works with imageries that both engage the hedonistic and disastrous, in which the results are sculptural whilst appearing painterly. Education 2010 Diploma in Fine Arts, Dasein Academy of Art, Solo Exhibitions 2017 Live Leak, Richard Koh Fine Art, 2014 In the Flesh, Richard Koh Fine Art, 2012 Private Sentiment, House of Matahati, Selected Group Exhibitions 2017 Art Stage Singapore 2017, Richard Koh Fine Art, Singapore Malaysian Art, A Special Preview, Richard Koh Fine Art, Malaysian Art, A New Perspective, Richard Koh Fine Art, Art Central Hong Kong, Hong Kong Art Stage Singapore, Singapore 2015 China International Gallery Exposition (CIGE) 2015, Beijing, China Synthesis, The Art Centre, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand I am Ten, Richard Koh Fine Art, Art Central Hong Kong 2015, Hong Kong Art Stage Singapore 2015, Singapore Malaysian Art, A New Perspective, Richard Koh Fine Art, Malaysia Art, A New Perspective, Richard Koh Fine Art, Singapore 2014 Art Taipei 2014, Taipei, Taiwan KIAF/14, Seoul, Korea Arts Kuala Lumpur Melbourne, Space@Collins Street Melbourne, Australia Configuration, G13 Gallery, MEAA, White Box, Publika, /50 (two man show with artist Zelin Seah), TAKSU, SAGER III (touring exhibition in 3 countries), HOM Gallery (Malaysia), Perahu Art Connection(Indonesia), Orange Gallery (Philippines) Frame of Mind II, Orange Gallery, Bacolod City, Philippines No Random Nonsense, Boston Gallery, Quezon City, Philippines X Individuals- The Explorations, Art Accent Gallery, Figuration Trajectory, G13 Gallery, Up, Group Exhibition, TAKSU, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Locals Only, TAKSU, 2012 Young & NEW Part IV, House of Matahati, A Meter Diameter, House of Matahati, 2011 MEAA, Soka Gakkai Cultural Building, The Malaysian Rice Plate Project, KL Convention Center, Suria KLCC, INSPIRATION OF TOMORROW, Starhill Gallery, 2010 NOW!, Starhill Gallery, Breakthrough, Starhill Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

18 Richard Koh Fine Art has been in operation since 2005 and is regarded as a pioneer for introducing Southeast Asian contemporary art to Malaysia and the region. Promoting an adventurous roster of emerging and established artists, the gallery regularly mounts exhibitions locally and abroad with a commitment to emerging practices and challenging media. RICHARD KOH FINE ART Jalan Maarof Bukit Bandaraya, Bangsar Kuala Lumpur Malaysia T +60 (03) 2095 info@rkfineart.com BVII Lot No. 2F-3, Level 2 Bangsar Village II Jalan Telawi 1, Bangsar Baru Kuala Lumpur Malaysia T +60 (03) F +60 (03) SINGAPORE OFFICE 10 Ubi Crescent #04-99 Ubi Techpark Lobby E Singapore Copyright 2017 Richard Koh Fine Art All rights reserved. No part of this publication 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 artist and gallery. Publication 2017 Richard Koh Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur All images courtesy of Richard Koh Fine Art and the artist, Yeoh Choo Kuan This catalog is published to accompany a solo exhibition by Yeoh Choo Kuan titled Live Leak at Richard Koh Fine Art, Lot No. 2F-3, Level 2, Bangsar Village II, Jalan Telawi 1, Bangsar Baru,59100 Kuala Lumpur from 5-21 January 2017.

Fendy Zakri. Hyphen Jocund

Fendy Zakri. Hyphen Jocund Fendy Zakri Hyphen Jocund Fendy Zakri Hyphen Jocund ARTIST STATEMENT It is the theory that decides what can be observed Albert Einstein Art is a mechanism for me to find satisfaction. In a selfabsorbing