CORE contemporary art

Art Gallery Weekend 2020: Right Here! Right Now!

Group Exhibition:-

CC Kua
Haafiz Shahimi
Jane Stephanny
Joshua Kane Gomes
Syahbandi Samat

Core Design Gallery in collaboration with
Artemis Art, Richard Koh Fine Art,
Suma Orientalis and The Back Room
for CIMB Artober 2020

9th – 11th October 2020

E- Catalogue

*Click on images to zoom in

In an unprecedented collaboration in the art world, five galleries across Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya are coming together for a novel weekend-long showcase of contemporary art. Right Here! Right Now!, conceived during the height of the movement control order, is a burst of energy in a time of diam diam, of stillness.

Each of the five galleries has put forth one of their represented artists, who has been tasked with creating a series of five new works. These works will then be distributed across the galleries, with each gallery showing one work from each artist for a total of five works per space. In the playful spirit of a scavenger hunt, visitors are encouraged to travel between galleries for the full experience, driving the motion of the moment as they traipse across the city over the course of the weekend.

Featured in the shows are the following artists and galleries: CC Kua from The Back Room KL, Syahbandi Samat from Artemis Art, Joshua Kane Gomes from Richard Koh Fine Art, Jane Stephanny from Suma Orientalis and Haafiz Shahimi from Core Design Gallery. Working in painting and mixed-media sculpture, these young artists – all below the age of 35 – bring an explosive formal sensibility to their experimentations. Charting their diverse practices across the geography of the city, Right Here! Right Now! is a kinetic transposition of the gallery-as-room to the city-as-gallery. There is no time or place like the present.

* Artworks are exhibited in each gallery separately as an activity to gallery hopping under the program of CIMB Artober 2020 and each installation view courtesy of the mentioned galleries.

CC KUA

HAAFIZ SHAHIMI

JANE STEPHANNY

JOSHUA KANE GOMES

SYAHBANDI SAMAT

Artist Statement

CC Kua

I enjoy living in the ordinariness of daily life; trivial things are not necessarily insignificant. Ordinary things have an essence that is waiting for our discovery. Yet this effort of uncovering only works in an impromptu manner – you discover them by chance with a conscious mind and observant eye. I am fully awake, but love falling into slumber. In the realm of dreams, every illogical sequence and fragment accumulates, forming mesmerizing and absurd plots. I see my works as a distillation process of the fragments. I capture, extract and compose them into visuals. While painting, sometimes I lead, sometimes I follow, and sometimes I am just on autopilot mode – I fly away with myself!

Haafiz Shahimi

Bunga Gersang, my latest series of 5 works is based on the local traditional motif. Flower is used as a symbolic representation of the growth of life. In my personal observation, I realised that society is starting to embrace themselves by looking deeper into their own identity especially with the recent lockdown there seem to be more time for self-reflection as if life blossoms again. Bunga Gersang is a representation – in order to recreate it must first destruct. I have incorporated several techniques for this series of work. The background of corroded rustic effect was produced by the use of chemical oxidisation on the metal and printed onto the surface of the mute. Using the effects of chemical oxidisation on the metal and print it the jute gives a feeling of corrosion rustic effect. The abstraction of flower created through pyrography print of the metal blocks and direct burning with touches of colours with of acrylic paint.

Jane Stephanny

When it comes to words, Jane Stephanny often feels she has all the right pieces of the puzzle in her head, but upon wanting to express them they come out all jumbled up in a chaotic pile of scattered notions and disjointed ideas. As a means of communicating her thoughts, drawing has always felt more natural and efficient to her than speaking or writing.

Regardless of the medium, Jane tries to make artworks that are, first and foremost, relatable to people. They often depict the quirks and peculiarities of the human condition, starting from careful observation of humans in their natural environment going about doing the things that make them human, but seen through a satirical lens. Having always been into kitsch and B-horror movies, Jane mixes the bizarre with the mundane, always putting a humorous spin on things, often in a slightly unnerving, grotesque manner.

Indeed, Jane is an ardent follower of the Zen philosophy of wabi-sabi (侘寂), finding perfection in imperfection, and embracing mistakes as adding a unique kind of beauty that is ultimately more meaningful than the beauty found in perfection. The characters in her pieces are flawed, not afraid to show the ugly side of their aesthetics and behaviour. They are flawed because they are human; indeed, being flawed is what makes them human.

At once contrasting with and complementing her focus on the relatable is a tendency to incorporate the fantastical, her works often featuring an array of weird hybrid creatures, freaks of nature which blur the lines between humans and animals. Again, they serve the purpose of questioning what it really means to be human, and whether we’re really all that different from the creatures we choose to surround ourselves with.

Jane likes using a variety of different art media, and enjoys exploring the link between process and application, using the medium as a means to convey a message as much as the drawing itself. She is particularly fond of printmaking, as the unpredictability in processes such as etching gives an organic feel to her works, adding imperfections in line with her central philosophy.

Joshua Kane Gomes

This series of sculptures are based on the five rivers of the Greek underworld, with each river corresponding to a stage of grief. The infernal rivers are the Lethe (forgetfulness/denial), Phlegethon (fire/anger), Styx (oaths/bargaining), Cocytus (wailing/depression) and Acheron (woe/ acceptance).

The shape of these sculptures are informed by the traits and depictions of their respective rivers in Greek mythology, as well as literature such as Dante Alighieri’s epic poem The Divine Comedy, tying into themes of processing and dealing with grief and loss: from the weary whispers of the Lethe, the adverse respite of Phlegethon, to the banks of Acheron, where the denied wander and wait.

The titles follow each stage of grief sequentially, while also referencing the communal use of water to bless, purify and cleanse (perhaps the latter more so than ever in our present situation), and in the context of this series, allude to a culture that sometimes meet such emotions with apathy or indifference rather than assistance, wherein one’s own mental fortitude and introspection can prove invaluable.

Syahbandi Samat

Un-Riveted is about a man’s responsibility and greed, presented as five displays, each comprising a separated body part in a wooden box. Nails drawn on top of every limb symbolize abandoned responsibilities that should have been carried out, but instead remain incomplete, towards family and society, forsaken due to the greed of wanting other more profitable and selfish pursuits.

A sinner.

The squeaky toy hammer is a weak force, one that isn’t powerful enough to hammer down and rivet in all the nails, unable to put things in the right place, unable to get its tasks done. It only makes noise, without producing any results.

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