100 Pieces: Art for All

This Labour Day, Wei-Ling Contemporary stages its most extensive display of artists’ works, ranging from paintings, sculptures and prints, at the gallery space. Presenting a specially curated selection of over 100 works by 28 established and up-coming artists. 100 Pieces: Art for All presents a platform where those who are interested in starting to collect art, can begin. The exhibition hopes to reevaluate the misconception that art collecting is for the elite few. By offering artworks which start from RM 400, it hopes to make art collecting more accessible to the wider public.

Presenting works by internationally distinguished artists such as Yau Bee Ling, Michal Macků and Anurendra Jegadeva, 100 Pieces: Art for All advocates for artists with a constructed and developed practice, grounded in the variables of intellectual and imaginative inquiry. Each artwork is accompanied with narrative(s) involving personal identity, social relationships, different settings and physical realities. On display will be Chong Kim Chiew’s ‘Circle and Hole’ (2008) – a work personal to the artist – which explores the notion of identity through labyrinths of fingerprint patterns. Swirls of white lines that seem like ocean waves from first glance, depict the overlapping patterns of fingerprints which evolved the artist’s understanding of identity; it is relational to its surrounding environment and community, not merely concerning one self. An artwork from 2008 that is fitting to our uncertain, turbulent circumstances, Chong shares, “In an uneasy world situation, it’s as if those circles are drifting in the sea. We must continue to be connected; to hold each other’s hands tightly.” Chong Kim Chiew’s works can be found in the collection of the Singapore Art Museum.

After months of being stuck indoors with travel restrictions still in place, Chen Wei Meng’s hyperrealistic paintings from his series Sekinchan: Land of Fertility (2016) offer the serene landscapes that we are longing for. Drawing from the artist’s devotion for his homeland of Malaysia, these paintings saw him repeatedly visit the same place – each visit presented him with nuances of the same paddy fields throughout the harvest seasons. As an artist-traveler, Chen often embarks on journeys for months – living and sleeping in a car – to be as close as possible to the experiences and places that move him. To the artist, the open space of paddy fields prompted the feeling of being by the sea in his hometown in Terengganu – “whenever I feel ‘sea-sick’ in the metropolis, Sekinchan will be the place I think of to breakaway.”

Artists often use their practice as a channel for documenting and questioning their live narratives for audiences to project them in their own contexts and realities. Renowned Czech photographer Michal Macků’s carbon prints on paper are a combination of historical photographic methods with his invented technique Gellage (ligature of collage and gelatin). His prints depict mostly the human body in abstract surroundings and distortions, which help the artist find new levels of humanness in the resulting work. As it is impossible to produce identical prints using the Gellage method, Macků only produced and signed 12 carbon prints on paper of each original work.

Through an art fair setting that supports dedicated artists while allowing everyone the chance to start or grow their collection, 100 Pieces: Art for All encourages the enthusiasm to engage and collect art in Malaysia. Art is for the many and not the few.

‘100 Pieces: Art for All’ is featured at Wei-Ling Contemporary from 1 May – 2 June 2021.

Wei-Ling Contemporary is located at RT01, Sixth Floor, The Gardens Mall, 59200, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Admission hours are Tuesday – Sunday 11am-7pm.

For appointments and further assistance, please contact +60322828323 or email: weilinggallery.amanda@gmail.com.