Choy Chun Wei (b.1973)
B. 1973, Kedah, Malaysia
Lives and works in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Choy Chun Wei is an artist whose predilections and ideals of art are based predominantly on design language. His immersion in Graphic Design studies at the tertiary level has provided design oriented conceptual reading and contextual imagination into his chosen practice in the fine arts. This confluence of design and fine art is germane to an exciting development of his art, clearly distinguishing Chun Wei from his contemporaries. An articulate and demanding artist, Chun Wei is never one to rest on his laurels constantly seeking to develop and improve himself as an artist. Already an established artist in the Malaysian art scene, Choy Chun Wei is much sought after by Malaysian public collections, as well as international collectors.
His multi-layered collage works, have occasionally been misconstrued as being located within the premise of abstraction, however the intent of the artist was to use this abstraction as an entry point for viewers to partake in his pictorial dialogue. Through the compactness and tensions created from the placement of different mediums on a canvas, his works possess a tactile quality. This constant need to experiment with and discover new materials, lend his works an edge which deviates from the conventional or expected.
Upon moving from the countryside, to an urban city environment, it changed his perception of space, where little pockets of green became big structures with artificial lights. This shift affected the way he perceived the world –a world where he now felt suffocated and encroached upon- and in turn, the way his works were made changed.
Material and material culture are therefore also important considerations in his practice, highlighting the influence of ‘seeing’ as the crucial element in the identification of texts and found objects within his dense, intricate collages.
The significance of objects are related directly to Malaysian material culture, as he is interested in exploring the process of seeing, and to a further extent how seeing leads to the selection and handling of materials. Due to the different properties of layered objects and its transformations. The dialogue for his works run around the entire canvas, generating visual stimulations at different trajectories. Each piece is carefully formulated to reflect highly-layered surfaces mapped in a convoluted manner. Hence the textures, correlation and intertwined compositions provide fresh openings to discuss the mediums and their interlocked connotations. Though visually similar in some ways, every piece displays its own characteristics.
He has always been captivated by the inherent meanings that come with fonts and texts. Simple words like ‘go’ and ‘new’ are indications or markers for him to create narrative(s) within a painting. Significant found words are important to the construction of a dialogue within his pieces, conveying pertinent and recurring subliminal messages that form a personal dialogue of his concerns interrelated with his life and work.
In 2014, he was the only Malaysian artist to present a solo booth at ‘Insights’, the curated section of Art Basel Hong Kong. For this project, the artist used the large number of visitors to ABHK as his source of inspiration, hoping to embark on an art-making process that involves collecting visitor’s personal information and representing it as art. With the advent of the world we live in today – gadgets, computers, brands, smartphones – the presence and essence of each individual human being is often overlooked, replaced instead by material goods, and this is where the seed of The Human Landscape was conceived. The result: one gargantuan painting on canvas, which required human interaction in order for it to be completed.
His 2017 exhibition ‘Tectonic Traces’ marked a significant progression from his past works, notably through the process of assembling more relief and adding more layers to his collages. Pushing boundaries through the use of tectonic materials, the works in the series accentuate the complexities and contradictions inherent in life’s fragments. Dealing with information and facts, at the same time interrogating our current state of mind, Chun Wei observes how our identity is transforming into numbers and codes.
In ‘Encountering Mass Man’ (2021), he acknowledges the sentimental aspects of being under lockdown during the worldwide pandemic. The series highlights our heavy use of technology as a way of coping with the strange conditions—be it for working, connecting with people, or as a form of entertainment. This time, the portraits are completed with typed symbols that represent facial features, inspired by a once popular texting style known as ‘emoticon’.
His solo exhibition ‘Changing Identity’ (2023) spurred a quickening of a myriad of thoughts, he implored us to question everything, and to intently listen. For Chun Wei, it was not sufficient to merely understand human reality, something had to be done to accurately interpret and debate relevant conditions; that ultimately, we were not mere cogs in a big and soulless machine.
Choy Chun Wei also participated in S.E.A Focus 2024 that was curated by John Tung under the theme ‘Serial and Massively Parallel’ where he showcased nine of his works that investigates the dynamics of the urban landscape and urges the contemplation of the manufactured nature of our world. This set of works marked a new direction for him as they are predominantly comprised of resin, a way to illustrate Chun Wei’s contemplation of the parallels between societal systems juxtaposed against mechanistic processes reminiscent of a factory line.