CORE contemporary art

Once belonged to the instrumental art collective Matahati (dispersed in 2007) has placed him under an unavoidable spotlight since the 1990s, one of the many directions in his art career that pushed his artistic ventures into multiple trajectories which include travelling across the globe spanning decades, concurrent with significant exhibitions that have emerged in-between. His impressive oeuvre over the years is not merely cultivated through his engagement with the tethered world, with investigative-like subjects encompassing insightful commentaries on the social, ethical, and cultural issues, but also his reevaluation on weighing its tendency to coalesce in the ‘maturing’ state of his being. Masnoor’s contemplative nature has always been his critical signature brought about in his experiences regardless of who, what, when and where — this, in essence, is how Masnoor relates as close as he possibly could to achieve a certain, not as superficial accomplishment when it comes to his art practice, impervious to the outcome.

Masnoor, also generally known for his dialectical approach, possesses a guiding principle that art should not conform to a rigid visual response. This is notable with his intersecting skills and techniques including experimentations with new media art that he favours courtesy of his shifting, overlapping careers which, to date, have inadvertently influenced his art practice. Breaking boundaries between genres seems to be the route he is comfortable taking as far as said practice is concerned, based on the fact that two years in the pandemic had curiously translated his methods to becoming mystically complex; something about the subjects Masnoor had concocted, moulded, and dutifully revised all these years that had felt at given times obscure to process in, yet adamant to resolve.

During this pivotal global phenomenon, too, Masnoor took off in reflecting on the subtle difference between being ‘stationary’ and ‘cautionary’, in which he allowed himself to delve deeper into the crux of the matter concerning the ‘disrupted’ routine in his art practice, its peculiarity on chances and occurrences, carrying the allegorical disconnection he had experienced in the wake of worldwide devastation — at the same time decontextualising and refocusing its situational turbulences that he deems appropriately imperative to share and perhaps, have a ‘silent conversation’ with.