Valentine Willie Fine Art is delighted to present Jalaini Abu Hassan’s long anticipated solo exhibition in Kuala Lumpur, Dendongeng. Jalaini (also known affectionately as ‘Jai’) has in the past three years busy himself with two successful solo exhibitions in Jakarta and Singapore, which has significantly increased his prominence and reputation within the regional art scene. Dendongeng heralds Jai’s return to Kuala Lumpur by presenting a new series of paintings that mark the development of the artist as one of Malaysia’s foremost proponent of Pop.

Inspired by larger than life characters of Malay literature and folklore, Dendongeng highlights Jai’s skilful employment of the pop vernacular to rearrange, reinterpret and retell new versions of these age-old tales. Through appropriating styles and techniques as broad-reaching as Renaissance chiaroscuro to Pop art’s treatment of the canvas as a flatbed to new exploration of bitumen medium as paint, Jai invents a new classical dialect to complement his visual narrative.

Dendongeng is a marriage of two Malay words, Dendangan (a graceful style of presentation, commonly in the form of singing) and Dongeng (myth or legend). Jai explains, ‘Besides its unique rhythmic resonance, the word Dendongeng is in my mind reminiscent of the infamous onomatopoetic phrase, Jeng-jeng-jeng!, a stereotypical tune used to evoke suspense in local movies.’
From bearded civet-cat to Mat Jenin the dreamer, to Badang the eater of a demon’s vomit, these stories are given a contemporary spin by highlighting their relevance to our present times. Dendongeng is the fantastical dramatic paradox that tells story of our country.

Dendongeng remixes two Malay words—dendangan (a graceful style of presentation, commonly in the form of singing) and dongeng (myth or legend)—in a portmanteau that describes the allegorical and performative nature of Jalaini Abu Hassan (Jai)’s paintings. Allegorical because of the way they recast traditional folklore in modern terms, performative because of the way the artist works with bitumen—conjuring, like a magician, figures, images, and forms out of the messy stains on his canvas.

The paintings in Dendongeng, Jai’s twentieth solo exhibition, draw inspiration from the larger-than-life characters of Malay literature and folklore—stories he now tells his children, just as they were once told to him. Characters like the bearded civet cat, Mat Jenin the dreamer, Badang the strongman, and Putera Bunian appear in these long, dream-like landscape paintings alongside motifs and styles from Western culture. Such is Jai’s way of uniting the two cultural influences that have made the biggest impression on him as a man and an artist.

Dendongeng showcases Jai’s deft use of pop vernaculars to rearrange, reinterpret, and retell age-old tales, reaffirming his commitment to painting as a dynamic, ever-evolving mode of storytelling.