Compared to recent painting exhibitions that examine the act of painting beyond just image-making, creating prints are relatively straightforward. Even so, a good understanding of one’s medium is a pre-requisite in contemporary art. Surreal and abstract pictures describe the majority of exhibits here, where colourful silkscreens with subversive intentions fail to impress. Mark Tan’s building outlines subscribe to an outdated minimalism that obscures his progressive approach, while leafy prints by Agnes Lau Pik Yoke present dull images. Scratchy lines contribute to a disturbing charm in Fadhli Ariffin’s works, the dirty aesthetic and temporal nature of drypoint making it a suitable technique to illustrate corrupt power.
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| Fadhli Ariffin - ‘Private Message' (2015) |
Different from his signature mirror-image woodcuts, Sabihis Pandi’s linocuts are overly dense, notably distorting the two-tone picture ‘Jerat’. Other test prints/ trial proofs hang nearby, where I stand captivated with tuber-like representations by Faizal Suhif. Odd shapes and prickly hairs indicate deep looking at nature, which trump his constructed landscapes on sale. Cetak Kolektif’s other founding member Samsudin Wahab projects “Sumpah”, a tale of one cursed man-ape transformed into a frog, then meeting its demise via drowning. The corresponding six etchings show masterful drawings of bizarre characters, and lead one to ignore concerns about coherence in the artist’s metamorphosis narrative. “What's happened to me,' he thought. It was no dream.”
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| Samsudin Wahab - Bab III: Jelmaan (2015) |