Malaysian Artist To End Beijing Sojourn With Open Studio Show
Written by Writer on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008
Malaysian Artist To End Beijing Sojourn With Open Studio Show
By Tham Choy Lin
BEIJING, Oct 15 (Bernama) — Malaysian contemporary artist Chan Kok Hooi will wrap up his residency in Beijing with an open studio exhibition next month to mark his stint as the first recipient of the Galeri Petronas international visual arts residency award.
Local art buffs will have an insight into the latest passion of the 34-year-old Penangite who has transferred his surreal artistry onto postcard size creations like antique black-and-white photographs.
“I am toying with the idea of making them smaller. This is very different from my previous works which are usually quite big, and I have also started adding colours,” said Chan when interviewed at a suburban artists colony.
Pasted on the wall of his temporary home here, since Sept 1, is an old group photograph of Malaysian Lions Club members, one of a batch which he picked up for several ringgit in Penang’s flea market in Lorong Kulit.
“I study these photographs a lot because of what I am doing. I love the autumn cool here, it helps me concentrate a lot more especially in the deep silence of the night when I paint,” Chan said.
The past weeks have been, in his own words, “eye opening” as he soaks in local Chinese art and culture and interacts with other international artists, including five who are also in residency like him, at the Red Gate Gallery.
Chan finds the art scene in the Chinese capital “very happening” and has visited more than 50 galleries and attended the Shanghai Biennale and Guangzhou Triennale art shows.
He has also taken up Red Gate Gallery’s offer to stay on for two more weeks after the residency award under Galeri Petronas ends on Oct 31.
This is his second sojourn abroad after a stint in the United States last year under the Freeman Foundation with Vermont Studio.
In the past five years, Chan has bagged more than a dozen awards and prizes, notching up his rising stature in the Malaysian arts world, and more crucially, the prize-money and sales of his works, enables him to survive as a fulltime artist.
“If I have the money, I will not sell any of my paintings,” he said with a pained look, his greatest fear being that his paintings may be discarded by trivial collectors after a while, “and it will be gone forever.”
Chan struggled on the well-trodden path of many artists, living broke and taking on side jobs like painting murals at the Berjaya Times Square indoor theme park in Kuala Lumpur and on a cruise liner in Germany.
In 2004, he was on the verge of signing up for another painting job in Hong Kong’s Disneyland when he was announced one of the five winners of the Philip Morris Malaysia-Asean Arts Award.
The RM15,000 prize kept him afloat for several months and his winning piece now hangs at the National Art Gallery.
He recalled a low point in 2005 when he could not scrape together RM27 to buy a bus ticket back to Penang to join his two elder sisters move into their new apartment.
He had paid the deposit for the apartment from the one million Japanese yen second prize he won in the Beppu Asia Biennale of Contemporary Art Award early that year.
“The prize was worth about RM36,000 then. My family was very happy to collect the keys and they kept calling me to go home but I didn’t have the money. Thankfully, things have turned around for me,” he said.
In April this year, Chan sent eight pieces of his “Old Photograph Series” to the Pierogi 2000 gallery in New York and five have been sold so far.
He is again a finalist for this year’s Sovereign Asian Art Prize in Hong Kong with another Malaysian, Hoo Kiew Hang. The results are expected this month.
Last year, Chan and Hamir Soib were the two Malaysian artists shortlisted as finalists for the award.
Other than the first prize, the works of finalists are auctioned off by Sotheby’s, with the proceeds split equally between charity and artist. Chan’s piece fetched US$4,500 (RM15,725).
After Beijing, Chan returns to Malaysia and will shift from Kuala Lumpur back to Penang to prepare for two solo exhibitions, with Galeri Petronas and NN Gallery in the capital.
For more of Chan’s works, log on to www.chankokhooi.com — BERNAMA
