Changing Identity
Wei-Ling Gallery is pleased to announce our exhibition, ‘Changing Identity’ by prominent Malaysian artist Choy Chun Wei in his fifth solo show with the Gallery.
“This collection of expressionistic paintings and totemic object works is about how we live and communicate, and its effect on human identities. We have become detached, remote, and homogenised.” – Choy Chun Wei
Choy Chun Wei’s ‘Changing Identity’ is a compendium of works which are ‘built-up’ images, a process the artist described as ‘liberating’. He deconstructs a whole object into various parts, which in turn transforms into an entity in its totality when seen from the viewer’s eyes. As a result, common texts and images are constantly in a state of flux and become terrifyingly unstable. The objects are another way to see the integration of texts and form as well as the conventionalised anatomy appropriate to our times.
These new works work vocalises the World’s inability to verbally communicate emotions, which can make us unrecognisable to ourselves and others around us.
Choy Chun Wei observed, “This most recent body of work is about the human condition. I found it fascinating to delve into the ‘making’ process, which eventually allowed me to shape the form/content not as a message but as how the state of our suppressed emotion has reinvented our sense of identity. Communication is quick, frequent, fluent, and effective, but the nuances of discernment and emotion is from time to time, lost in our daily lives. In the application of abstraction, the human form is simplified and geometricised at times, and sensualised at others with curvilineal lines and movement. Also, the making is extended to the process of casting and assembling to relay a more objectified impression.”
“The communication tool has evolved into something other than what it was intended to be – fun, display, ‘infotainment’, and showcasing are additional features, and the effects, of course, are proliferating. Emotions and poetry are pushed to the sidelines. It is swift and to the point. Perhaps through the rigidity and surface-treatment of my art work approach, I hope to convey the attitude of form, thus reflecting a feature of the environment in which we live.”
‘Changing Identity’, is featured at Wei-Ling Gallery from 14th February – 4th March 2023. Wei-Ling Gallery is located at No 8, Jalan Scott, Brickfields, 50470 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Admission hours are Tuesday – Friday 10am – 6pm, Saturday 10am – 5pm.
Exhibition is open by appointment only. For appointments and further assistance, please contact +60322601106 or e-mail siewboon@weiling-gallery.com
ABOUT THE ARTIST
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.
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.
In his latest exhibition ‘Encountering Mass Man’ (2021), the artist acknowledged the sentimental aspects of being under Lockdown during the Worldwide pandemic. The series highlighted 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 were completed with typed symbols that represented facial features, inspired by a once popular texting style known as ‘emoticon’.
