Malaysian artist Vincent Leong returns to VWFA Kuala Lumpur with his latest solo project YOU ARE HERE presenting the artist’s viewpoints about Malaysia and Kuala Lumpur through nostalgic, critical and humorous bodies of work. Photographs, light boxes, installation as well as hand made and manufactured objects create a bittersweet conversation around the social-cultural issues that Leong has observed and is implicated by as a Malaysian. Characteristically iconoclastic, he subverts familiar Malaysian symbols and landmarks that merge photographs of abandoned spaces with famous architectural landmarks alluding to the flaws of Malaysian modernity, or light boxes that show the reflections of domestic and public interior spaces through the distorted surfaces of inanimate TV screens. These silent sentinels, question who is looking at who and serve as alternative and highly atmospheric images of people and place. Juxtaposed with highly politicised cultural symbols and objects the exhibition therefore oscillates between searing derision and poetic longing.

Alluding to a specific moment or place YOU ARE HERE references locational maps that plot the position of a viewer at any given point in order to locate and further navigate themselves within an area. The exhibition, is in itself a type of orientation, which sees Leong aligning himself and his opinions through a new series of new works, in relation to his surroundings and circumstances at this particular point in his life. Known for an irreverent and provocative approach, his musings are complicated by time and maturity as an artist who has been practicing for nearly ten years. Including more romantic overtones to his work alongside his biting political commentaries the exhibition is as much a multifaceted portrait of people and place as it is about Leong’s understanding of himself and the world right now.

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VINCENT LEONG: YOU ARE HERE runs from 13th June until 7th July 2012 at:

Valentine Willie Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur
1st Floor, 17 Jalan Telawi 3, Bangsar Baru
59100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

T: +603 2284 2348 | F: +603 2282 5190 | www.vwfa.net

For general or press enquiries about this exhibition,
please email snow@vwfa.net or call +603 2284 2348

Essay

Enge poringe?*
By Eva McGovern Exhibition Curator and Head of Regional Programmes

Valentine Willie Fine Art is proud to present the gallery’s second solo project with Malaysian artist Vincent Leong. Coming from a generation of artists who studied abroad and returned to Malaysia in the early 2000’s Leong has exhibited across the region and internationally, in biennales and group exhibitions, as well as completing residencies in Singapore, Korea and Japan. Influenced by the ideologies of Conceptualism, critical discourse, and the relationship between art and the public, he is known for being provocative, humorous and analytical. Promiscuous in medium, his ideas continue to extend across photography, video, sound, installation, objects, graphics and performance, and vary across a wide range of subject matter. Initially interested in systems of piracy and authenticity, his work also pushes the boundaries of social propriety within and outside the art world. However, although engaged with ideas of appropriation, conceptual reflectivity, comedy and controversy, the strength of Leong’s work is in its cultural location: Malaysia. Of how he locates ideas of socio-cultural critique within the current climate of the country. You Are Here therefore, aims to introduce and reintroduce audiences to the current junction of Vincent Leong’s practice. In the five years since his last KL solo, The Exhibition That Was, the tone of his aesthetic output has shifted; his questioning of racial politics more overt, and his understanding of process, technique and execution increased in terms of formal inquiry.

The constant dilemma of race in Malaysia and the political power plays made in its name, of the conflict between cultural pluralism and the dominant Malay/Islamic religious and political positioning, continue to antagonise many of Leong’s artistic statements. Run Malaysia Run, the artist’s well known video installation from 2009, was a commentary on the cyclical, running in circles, going nowhere, discussions around Malaysian multiculturalism, whereas here, his colourful ironies have now been replaced, with a more straightforward socio-political lament/critique. The theatricality of his practice, of restaging and destabilising the semiotics of objects remains in place, but the voice of frustration and satirical disdain is more boldly felt in works such as Karya Ahmad Bahaya and Keeping Up With The Abdullahs 1 and 2. It is a deliberate and problematic observation of race that juxtaposes the celebration of difference with ideas of forced assimilation. By challenging deeply embedded cultural symbols he shares an ongoing frustration of affirmative action schemes in Malaysia that continue to destabilise the notion of an equal society, as well as promote normalised systems of racism that are still apparent in the country.

His observations also extend into the very fabric of the Malaysian landscape. Although a devoted traveller, who has spent time across Asia, Europe and America, it is Leong’s recent mapping of places and spaces closer to home that inspires his creative output. Gone are the bright and immersive environments of his Tropical Paradise series of graphically designed and spray painted wallpapers featuring cultural clichés from Southeast Asian nations. Instead, what emerges, and from a purposefully Malaysian vantage point, are silent spaces frozen in time across varying states of decay. Whether TV reflections of public and private spaces in Farewell to Format or technically collaged images of abandoned interiors with views of famous Malaysian landmarks such as the Petronas Twin Towers in Executive Properties, these sites chart Leong’s interpretation of our cultural terrain. It is a dystopian viewpoint, leached of humour and, interestingly, for an artist unconcerned with traditional aesthetic values, tragically beautiful.

Beauty and formalism are not familiar terms associated with a practice driven more by concept and ideas via experimentation and new media strategies. However, You Are Here – the title itself alluding to reference points on area maps- is a process of orientation, which sees Leong aligning himself and his opinions, past and present, artistic and socio-political, through a series of new works across photography, light boxes, objects and video, in relation to his current surroundings and circumstances. Known for his irreverent mockery of the Malaysian condition, his musings are also complicated by time and maturity as an artist who has been practicing for nearly ten years. By including more aesthetic overtones and tangible objects and images, alongside his political commentaries, the exhibition becomes a dialogue between his discursive idea driven practice and a new unexpected romantic formalism, hitherto unheard of in Leong’s work. Such a meeting point encourages and questions perceptions of Vincent Leong’s practice at this moment, as well urges audiences to locate themselves within the beauty and social contradictions of the Malaysian landscape itself. EM

* enge poringe (tamil) = where are you going? (english)