The Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art exhibition catalogue (APT2)

Les Fleurs de Malaisie Lives and works in Sarawak, Malaysia Modern painting emerged from romantic art in a confusion of sensation and intellect. Baudelaire defined romanticism as 'a mode of feeling', yet the symbolism that arose from it is best explained in terms of 'the idea'. Baudelaire was also the first to conceive of art history as the progression of each form towards its essence. Greenberg developed this view in terms of painting. He defined painting as the material presentation of flatness in which medium, construction and process become meaning and even expression. Greenberg's attempt to enshrine this essentialism in notions of quality has collapsed in the crisis of judgment we call post-modernism. In Fauzan Omar's Luminosity 'Celebration' 1995-96 we find the carcass of formalist painting sprouting sweet flowers of allegory once more. Malaysian abstract painting emerged in a milieu of American cultural expansion. Abstract expressionism and hard edge painting dominated the international scene and Malaysian artists inevitably imbibed these modes. Nevertheless, the recycling of reductive painterly manoeuvres has involved misconceptions, misuse and indifference Luminosity 'Celebration' 1995-96 Synthetic polymer paint and cut canvas on canvas Six panels: 244x51 cm (each) Collection: The artist to original aesthetic and philosophical contexts. Formalism is simply the tabula-rasa (blank slate, blank canvas or operating table even!) for the encounters and transformations that constitute modern Malaysian painting. In Luminosity 'Celebration' the interplay of sacred order and profane inflection transcends the modernist dialectic of form and content. Malaysian abstraction must be approached in terms of Islam. In the avoidance of al-wahm (illusion), al-hikmah (wisdom) determines that every artistic creation must conform to the laws of its domain of existence and must make those laws intelligible. Generally, a plane image is tolerated so long as it shows neither a representation of God nor the face of the Prophet, but an image 'that casts a shadow' is less acceptable. The illusion of life is avoided even in figurative art and stylised plant forms are the only representations admitted in the truly sacred art of Islam. In Luminosity 'Celebration' polychromed canvas flowers deny spatial illusion as they emerge synthetically from their cut canvas ground. 92 I ART I s T s: sou TH AND sou TH - EA s T A s I A The Malay idiom has been dominant in forging a national identity from the plurality of Malaysian culture. A few contemporary Malay artists have been fundamentally Islamic in their approach, but many have produced work that is consistent with the principle of tawhid (the singularity and inimitability of God) as stated in the shahadah (confession of faith). In Islamic geometry the infinite, or that which is beyond manifestation, is symbolised within the manifest realm by the indefinite potential of pattern. Tawhid (unity) is echoed in the multiple reflections of a single image that nevertheless remains within a finite set. With the indefinite extension of colour in Luminosity 'Celebration', form gives way to a flowering of tawhid. In the art of Nusantara (the Malay Archipelago), a peculiarly Malay sensibility has provided counterpoint and colour to the Islamic tendency to abstraction. The combination of an expressive temperament and the strict adat (code of behaviour) of a culture of restraint has produced a deeply romantic sentiment of rindu (yearning).This romanticism is arguably the refinement of a psyche that in the extreme produces emotions like amok (psychotic, explosive, excessive) and latah (vulgar, compulsive, repetitive, exhibitionist). In contemporary painting, the restraint of abstraction upon a powerful urge to express has produced an exquisitely sweet yet deadly intense Malay modernism. The flowers of Luminosity 'Celebration' proliferate across their modular support in an effusion of opulent (decadent even!) Malay sentiment. Malaysian art functions within multiple frames of reference.The facts of a painting may simultaneously invoke different theoretical contexts. In Islamic art structure, mass and weight are de-emphasised or denaturalised and form is found in ornament and pattern. It is not in terms of material or construction that the 'domain' of each art is defined. Adherence to the 'laws of the domain' means the avoidance of spatial and vital illusion. It does not mean 'truth to materials'. It does not mean 'painting as object'. In leaning against the wall and acknowledging weight, Fauzan Omar's Luminosity 'Celebration' strikes a distinctly secular pose. Niranjan Arumugam Deva Rajah,Lecturer of Applied & Creative Arts, Universityof Malaysia,Sarawak,Malaysia