Filtered at Wei-Ling Gallery

Here is the latest review. Observe that I changed the closing paragraph. Written with claws in or out, you will have to judge. Some paragraphs I'm not entirely satisfied with, especially the one about writers 'critiquing' a show by writing about each art work separately. I'm still working through why that seems such a lazy and useless approach to me.

[Images from www.weiling-gallery.com: from Noor Azizan Rahman Paiman's Challenger series (2007)]

Like an old wives’ tale, the myth of the artist as hero and truth-bearer has been handed down to us, somewhat battered and transgressed upon, but stubborn in its perpetuity. It is a notion implicitly buried in Filtered, an exhibition at Wei-Ling Gallery that ‘aims to portray the ‘truth’ as seen through the eyes of Malaysia’s most cutting-edge artists’.

‘Truth’ is surely one of humanity’s more morally and ethically weighted words, especially in these pluralistic times of conflicting world views. One hesitates to use it without those quotation marks. That is why the premise of this exhibition is so intriguing: that of artists as filters, engaged in the act of filtering through the mass media’s infinite web of information.

Reflecting the show’s socio-political bent, a few artists draw imagery directly from topical events. Ise (Roslisham Ismail) does this most explicitly by reproducing a wanted poster featuring two Malaysians suspected of involvement in the 2002 Bali bombings. This work gains meaning when seen in light of the rest of Ise’s practice which makes extensive use of ready-made imagery. Taken on its own however, it seems utterly deadpan and somewhat lazy. Other artists use an allegorical approach to images, such as Marvin Chan’s commentary about hypocrisy in politics and the media, as well as J.Anu’s reflections on Indian cosmology and its influence on Indian identity.

There are some exceptional works. One of these is Zulklifli Yusof’s powerful abstract triptych Reformasi. Made in 1997, it reflects the tumultuous tone of a society rocked by the Asian economic crisis and the scandalous sacking of then deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on charges of corruption and sodomy. Nor Azizan Paiman’s Challenger series is also excellent, juxtaposing quotes from various local politicians with a colorful cast of fantastical figures. Alluring and naughty, these works speak mischievously about the carnivalesque atmosphere of a government populated by characters that do grotesque and ridiculous things.

Ivan Lam’s work explores the paradox of artists capitalizing on socio-political situations for their own artistic and financial ends, whilst appearing to critique those situations. In Toil/VSOP, the text ‘artists like criminals are opportunists’ accompanies a painted scene of highway toll booths, obviously in reference to rising toll prices. This is the most self-reflexive work in Filtered, and in its own cynical way manages to ask: why listen to artists? What sets their voices apart from any other on the street, TV, radio, or in the newspapers?

On the whole, the works featured are fairly strong, sophisticated and resolved. Why then does the exhibition leave such a tepid impression? Once again, (and I seem to be singing this phrase like a sad refrain) the show’s great weakness is a lack of curatorial direction. Despite their individual quality, the works in Filtered do not converse with each other. The viewer is left with an exhibition of seemingly stand-alone paintings, each linked to the other not by the sinew of discourse, but by nothing more than a tenuous flavor of social engagement. This may explain why Hasnul J Saidon’s exhibition essay, although it begins by creating a critical discourse around the notion of ‘filtering’, proceeds to analyze each artwork in the show one by one, much as I have done above (albeit in a more limited capacity). When critics and writers resort to this sort of visual analysis that fits this square peg (artwork) into that square hole (curatorial theme), it hints at a solipsistic approach to art, in which art creates discourse that is relevant only to itself. It is an approach that seems antithetical to the self-reflexivity implied in an exhibition of ‘socio-political artworks’.

Moreover, Filtered appears to be a product-driven, not process-driven endeavor. The title hints at this. It is telling that the word used is neither filter, nor filtering, but filtered. A thing that has been filtered has already undergone a process. It bears some relation to its source (the unfiltered material), as well as the marks of the filtering process, but it is essentially a new thing, a new product. The artworks in the show are socio-political in nature – but that is neither here nor there. By strict definition all artworks are a product of the environment in which the artists find themselves in. Such an environment is invariably socio-political, even if it happened to consist of a blank white room. Filtered fails to provide a critical framework with which to interrogate how artists filter the socio-political. The artworks thus remain couched in an art-object idiom, presented as mere artifacts of artistic activity.

The late Redza Piyadasa (1939 – 2007) envisioned artists as having a defined and essential role to play in society. In his own words: ‘More thought should be given to the role of artists in public spaces – it is not about themselves and their puny phobias and insecurities, but about the artist as a social historian’.

The premise of this exhibition held so much potential for lively dialogue about how art, artists and society intersect. Its intention was full of the kind of critical tensions that create relevant and utilitarian discourse. It is therefore all the more disappointing that the viewer is merely left with the shallow observation that truth is relative and that artists simply represent different versions of it. We accept these ‘truths’ not because they are vigorous and challenging, but because we continue to believe in the myth of artists as heroes, blessed with insight beyond that of normal ken. Maybe it’s just easier that way.

This article will be published in next month's (Aug 07) issue of Off The Edge.