Eye-popping Moment

Okaaay. So we went to Bank Negara Museum and Art Gallery. And thank goodness, it's a separate building from Bank Negara Headquater, I always thought we were going to visit a bank with a lot working people sitting behind counters and couting money. Lol.

During our journey to Bank Negara, we had a mini farewell for Miss E!

Photo by Shirley 

It's an unusual thing to see Miss E putting on her usual big smile during farewell. We expected her to cry cats and dogs.

Nahhhh, kidding. Hahaha. We're happy to see her leaving joyfully to further her study.

And all the best to Miss E!! Continue to inspire people around you like how you inspire us!

Okay, and we did like ENDLESS wefie on the bus, using Miss E's ultra-sophisticated and high technology smartphone. Seriously, now we can do simple hand gestures then the phone will immediately snap photo? That's kinda coooool

Back to the topic.

So, we reached Bank Negara after an hour long traffic jam.

Their glass buildings look kinda cool (Photo by fivefeetninegiraffe)

Their interior design is super duper classy and beautiful. True la, it's art gallery mannnn. You don't see any art gallery or exhibition in rumah papan right? Art gallery is the collection of luxurious goods. It's the access to glamorous lifestyle. Certain artwork can cost sheer amount of money--- million ringgit for one artwork!!! It's quite sad that due to the whole art buying game----the fact that art carries value and brings profit----art has become a rich man game.

This doesn't only happen in painting, same goes to music. Last few months ago, my all time favourite classical pianist Valentina Lisitsa came to Singapore for live concert! And the cheapest ticket (most probably you have to stand afar and see her in ant size) is about Rm100++  and I haven't include the travelling fee to singapore. So I gave up watching her live performance immediately.

But well, fortunately we enter the galleries for free. woohooo

After taking insane amount of pictures, we went for a talk by Muid Latif. Honestly speaking, due to his attire (vest and slacks uniform), I thought they sent us an usher or tour guide to bring us around. But when he started to show his past works, I was totally amazed! They are all spectacular!!!

One thing that I found him amazing is that his passion towards exploring different things (his extensive knowledge towards astrology is impressive) but yet retaining his own styles in his work. And he talked about how we should find our own speciality, understand more about ourselves and create an identity/icon out of it.

True also la. There are so many possibilities in us, so you shouldn't fix your field of interest once you feel comfortable doing what you are doing. You should instead pick up and learn everything, grow within what you have learnt, and carve your own creativity.

After the talk, we went to visit the art gallery. I won't really talk a lot about this since Dr Carmen shared a lot of things with us.

I'll share with you all the painting that I really really like a lot.

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The Rainbow Day (by Khoo Sui Hoe, 1972)

The exact painting looks a lot bigger than this la. I instantly fell in love with this painting once I saw this. Literally love at first sight. And so I went to google about this Khoo Sui Hoe guy who painted this.

Apparently he's a rich old guy and now resides in US. And he doesn't have instagram :O

Below are some of his other works

Some of you will notice that he plays a lot with circles and colours in his paintings. (nahhh, you didn't notice that, did you? You were scrolling down and wanting to end reading this post quickly right?)

Anyway, I like his artwork a lot because of his colourful and surreal elements. I'm fascinated by surrealistic art ever since taking film study. Lol. I guess Joe Yan had too much influence on us.

The Rainbow Day kinda reminds me of a song called No Surprises by Radiohead. They all portray the same thing: pleasantly mysterious. I guess the circles, harmonious colours and nature elements accentuate the pleasant, wholeness and relaxed feeling. In a contrast, the human-like figure portrays a state of calm and somehow they all look very dumb dumb.

Look calm and dumb, Hmm

That kinda sounds a lot like me eh? Lol. Is that why I like his artworks a lot?

Anyway, art gallery is a great hang-out place I'd say. Peaceful and quiet moment with the artworks and myself. Looking at how the artists express their values, beliefs, thoughts, perspectives, emotion through just mere colours and shapes.

While you get to know them better, you are also getting to know yourself better.

I'm looking forward to our next field trip to National Art Gallery.

 :D

Conceptual Art

Sorry for not updating my blog recently, I've been hardworking and lazy at the same time. 

Hardworking because I've a lot assignments to do, lazy because I procrastinate a lot. Oh mian.. 

Well, for this week, we have Tan Zi Hao as our guest lecture. 

Dr Carmen introduced Zi Hao as one of the few artist who makes conceptual art in Malaysia. This is my first time coming across to this term. Basically, it means art that involves "idea", where the idea itself becomes art. 

At first, I felt like this whole "conceptual art" thingy is not my cup of tea. I even felt that conceptual art is a fraud, because it seems like it doesn't need great skill to produce art if art is all about conveying an "idea".

I can just literally put a blank canvas in a posh looking space, with good lighting and say this is an art. And believe it or not, people actually did that. 

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Or this? 

A display feature pieces of wood at Birmingham's Icon Gallery

It feels like the artist started this work and eventually got bored and left his or her work unfinished. Lol. 

Most of the conceptual artwork makes the viewer feels uncomfortable, because it is too "modern" to understand it. 

For traditional art, you need skills to draw, and you need GREAT skill to actually make people to appreciate your artwork. But, there are people who have great MIMICRY skill, who can draw anything that is able to be visually seen by human eyes. They are just basically making a copy of the object or photographs as close as it can be.

Painting of a city
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That fellow who sings Let It Go. Lol. I don't remember her name.

This kind of art work, becomes less meaningful, because it doesn't convey anything but a painstaking skill only. We can call this as "mute art"---- art that doesn't speak for anything. 

This could mean that good visual art requires great skill, but great skill doesn't necessarily make good art.

This brings to the question --- What is art?

I was quite confused when Zi Hao was passing one of his conceptual art - The Soil (I don't quite remember the name) for us to have a look. I was confused as my own definition for art is completely destructed when he claimed that this packet, contained a handful of soil, together with a few random materials, including of his own sperm (seriously?) is an art work he made to convey his ideas and thoughts about our country.

This artwork, literally makes me uncomfortable, frankly speaking. Uncomfortable because it causes me to think a lot instead of enjoying it like how I enjoy appreciating traditional visual art (sometimes it is so well painted and drawn that you can "feeeeeeel" the emotion in the artwork).

Looking at Zi Hao's artwork, I had questions like: Is conceptual art about conveying idea regardless of any aesthetic properties? 

If it requires no aesthetic value, what distinguish conceptual art from non art? 

What if the idea proposed by the artist fails? 

Can failure be accepted as part of the art? 

Can idea fail?

As I had these questions racing through my mind, suddenly, I thought I understood something---- I think I know what is this guy sitting in front, trying to do with all of these art works.

The conceptual art work, obtains meaning by questioning.

Questioning what is the limit of art. What is the role of people instead of the role of artist.

First, Zi Hao questions about the limits of art by revealing a whole new mechanism of art. He put ticking alarm clock in British Council, he sat outside of his class, he obstructed his lecturer's view, he shook hands with the audiences and so on. 

This kind of art initially makes people feel uncomfortable as it moves people out of their comfort zone by destructing the mechanism of traditional art, and people tend to have many questions as they experience this, just like how The Soil did to me. 

When you questioning about it, you are actually throwing a catalyst into a debate. In this case, the artwork itself is the catalyst, and then people will debate over the artwork or the concept behind it.

Eventually, the concept proposed by the artist is said to have impact on people. So, conceptual artwork is meant to be uncomfortable, it's not meant for entertainment or escapism purposes. 

I've got to say that many Malaysians are very syok sendiri kind of people. 

"I got a stable job, I got nice food. I got a nice family. My life is perfect and I don't have to care about the government and politics."

The first step to solve a problem, is to not hide from it. 

And how do you make people to not hide from the problems? You make them question about it, and through questioning, you are forced to see different sides of a matter (in this state, you probably will feel discomfort as your conservative way to understand everything is destructed).

When you are exposed to a whole new perspective, you are curious what is truth. Then your curiosity towards finding the answer requires you to have confidence towards your own culture belief and values, and requires you to have courage to overcome challenges, and constancy to keep moving forward despite of our fears.

These 4Cs eventually leads to change.

(Feels familiar? Dr Carmen mentioned about it in one of our class) 

Our country desperately needs a change, but first we need to make people to realize the need to change. We, as the future generation of our country, and potentially to be working in creative industry in the future, what we can do is to make people question about the circumstances in our country by producing art that conveys idea.

Just like how Zi Hao did.

So, to answer this week question assigned by Dr Carmen, what did you learn from Tan Zi Hao?

I've learnt

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The art of questioning.