The Painting Show was a three-painter show curated by Yee I-Lann featuring Gan Siong King, Hamir Soib, and Phuan Thai Meng, which took place at The Annexe Gallery at Kuala Lumpur’s Central Market with the curatorial experiment of describing a place or society not through its people but rather its objects and residues. All three painters attempt to engage with the formal aspects of painting and mark-making traditions in order to reveal the meaning and possibilities of painting in the present day.

Gan Siong King presented a set of paintings in which he has cleverly subverted painting’s traditional trajectories in order to offer a meta-commentary on the medium. Hamir Soib’s paintings explored emotional and spiritual realms where the capture of light becomes paramount. Phuan Thai Meng’s realist paintings explored liminal spaces within an urban environment, honing in on the ordinary in order to explore the awkward relationships between these spaces and their inhabitants.