10 August, 2pm: Opening Reception 

A resurgence 27 years after his last solo presentation, this exhibition contemplates herd mentality as the result of the sociopolitical, economic and historical dynamics.

Oscillating between the present, and history, the works are lucid about everyday violence experienced by social beings, underlining hypocrisy of the authority contrasted with learned apathy of the mass. The works pivot the mood of the exhibition from a homage to a contemporary theatre stage backdrop to a critique of current sociopolitical affairs. 

Tan’s inspiration comes from his close observation of the homeland and the people. Through several innovative artistic choices, he managed to make a direct appeal to the viewers’ hearts and minds, especially with his choice of expressive strokes of melancholic palette. The act of seeing, guided by the artist’s strategic charting of the visual symbols, is the most promising way to enter the complexity of his thoughts.

The pictorial force of visual symbols manipulated by the artist, reveals an extension of his questioning about the world’s power structure. Masks as an object of disguise, signify sanctimony and moral indifference. The plain, pale and undecorated masks seen in Tan’s works, evoke a resemblance to the Bauta masks of Venice which the Venetian politicians traditionally wear during important voting sessions. While the Bauta masks in Venice are a symbol of democracy and freedom to vote, the masks in Tan’s works question the underlying motives, hidden agendas and ethical incapability of the people.

The use of mysterious characters in masks and robes, even with the deliberate erasure of the information that constituted a clearer indication of the protagonists’ identities, discusses the mutable dimension of historical personalities, however constructing similar narratives throughout the years. This points to new ways of reading his works, based on the extrapolation of human nature.

With its performative prophecy, this body of works suggests a new dimension of interpretative possibility when viewed and reviewed around 10 years after the time when it was created. The local and geopolitical scenes were with the power play episodes staged by the faces of yesteryear. Fast forward to the present day, the plots and circumstances are found uncannily familiar, only with different casts on occasions. 

The rain that overwhelms the entire canvas marks the artist’s poetic commitment in portraying the inevitability of tragedies consequential of man’s destructive behaviour. No one could be spared. A person’s foolishness is capable of bringing forth a lot more disasters than one could imagine.

About Tan Chin Kuan 

B. 1966, Johor, Malaysia 

Tan Chin Kuan was born in Johor, Malaysia in 1966. He graduated with a Diploma in Fine Art from the Malaysian Institute of Art in 1987. Via various mediums such as painting, sculpture, installation and performance art, Tan Chin Kuan has built a body of works which deals with sociopolitical commentaries such as questionings of the power structure, social inequalities as well as moral degradation. Expressive strokes and forms of high-contrast blue, red and black tones are his hallmark.

His works are in the esteemed collection of Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (Japan), Osaka Prefectural Government and Osaka Foundation of Culture (Japan), Singapore Art Museum and National Gallery Singapore (Singapore), as well as the Malaysian National Art Gallery. He was one of the very few Southeast Asian artists who were granted the opportunity of a solo exhibition at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Japan. Tan now lives and works in Malaysia.