{"id":6741,"date":"2015-09-30T17:40:37","date_gmt":"2015-09-30T09:40:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www2.weiling-gallery.com\/gallery\/?post_type=portfolio&p=6741"},"modified":"2015-09-30T18:02:16","modified_gmt":"2015-09-30T10:02:16","slug":"beware-as-you-become-the-centre-the-three-faces-of-chong-kim-chiew-by-sarah-vogeler","status":"publish","type":"portfolio","link":"https:\/\/weiling-gallery.com\/gallery\/portfolio-item\/beware-as-you-become-the-centre-the-three-faces-of-chong-kim-chiew-by-sarah-vogeler\/","title":{"rendered":"Beware As You Become The Centre – the three faces of Chong Kim Chiew by Sarah Vogeler"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Beware As You Become The Centre \u2013 the three faces of Chong Kim Chiew
\nby Sarah Vogeler<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe path I choose through the maze makes me what I am. I am not only a thing, but also a way of being–one of many ways–and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to take will help me understand what I am becoming.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2015 Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon<\/em><\/p>\n

It perks you up immediately when an artist says, \u201cThere are a number of personalities in me, and it never gets lonely. They never leave me in peace, and want to go to different places at the same time, and though at times we end up nowhere, that is still somewhere. No?\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes. No. There really is no accurate answer to that line of interrogation. It is like revisiting John Lithgow\u2019s Raising Cain, without the daddy issues, but the lines \u201cHickory Dickory Dock, Cain has picked his lock, He\u2019s done a bad deed, Now Josh comes to bleed, Hickory Dickory Dock\u201d stays throughout. And Chong Kim Chiew\u2019s varying degrees of works do appear, at the first, second, third glance, as if accomplished by different people. His latest offering, his solo (and \u2018group\u2019 show) debut with Wei-Ling Contemporary, carries a title ominous, dark, macabre even. Beware As You Become The Centre is a hodgepodge of works comprising a video installation, a photo installation and a series of tarpaulins tortured with acrylics, tape and knifes all done by the artist\u2019s three avatars: 0, Kim and Topy.<\/p>\n

Beware As You Become The Centre is six years\u2019 worth of work, first conceptualised when he was invited to a close friend\u2019s art gallery in Guangzhou, where he had also studied art from 1997 to 2001. At the time of these writings, except for his tarpaulin massacres, none of his other works were available for viewing, which to an extent, makes explaining them that more challenging.<\/p>\n

He showed illustrations of his installations, so meticulously drawn one could visualise what the final inventions would look like. In his words, \u201cThis exhibition attempts to deconstruct the capabilities and limitations of a solo creator, to seek various possibilities in terms of connections, disconnections, and how creations can become multifaceted coming from one single entity, and fragmented into personalities which are poles apart\u201d.<\/p>\n

A writer would have favourites, or rather would revisit a particular piece over and again. In this case scenario, it is Topy\u2019s wall painting, Exhibition Logo Design No: 1, a monochromatic insignia of an androgynous persona standing perpendicular as her\/ his decapitated head sits in a waste paper basket. What is Topy saying: times are bad but we shouldn\u2019t lose our heads? Or times are so bad we\u2019ve already lost them without realising it? This avatar\u2019s rebellion against convention, the war inside his head is vehemently piercing; he pitches, he hits, uncaring of the outcome, because in this particular realm, beheading is a fondness dreadful, and we wonder in the end, if any remain alive.<\/p>\n

Now we arrive at 0\u2019s inkjet print, Your Place and My Place. Set against a grainy stark-white background, the solitary light switch makes for a severe minimalist piece, 0 utilising everyday objects for a forceful and psychosomatic effect. It is retrogression to Martin Creed\u2019s 2001 Turner Prize winning Work No: 227. Sure, Martin\u2019s entry was not exactly popular, one chagrined artist threw eggs at it in a fit of rage, but Tate Britain did purchase it in 2013 for its permanent collection, Martin\u2019s disquietingly empty room with lights pre-timed to go off every few seconds. 0\u2019s own entry has almost no content, he envisions the space as a medium to be cast, like clay, and this clever, biting and sensorial work gives a whole new meaning to the term \u2018viewing pleasure\u2019. Your Place and My Place is 0\u2019s way of saying, \u201cYou explain it and I\u2019ll listen, and if it unnerves, better still. Just tell me why\u201d.<\/p>\n

Up next is Chong Kim Chiew\u2019s Unreadable Wall, a bizarre fortification of bricks fashioned out of newspapers. As Mark Twain wryly observed, \u201cIf you don\u2019t read the newspaper, you\u2019re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you\u2019re misinformed\u201d. So what does Kim do? He mashes it all up, turned them into mortar, plastered each one on top of one another like some expert bricklayer, and there it is: a brand new way of absorbing information. It is perhaps, what the brain resembles like from too much, from too little, from nothing. Unreadable Wall is Kim Chiew\u2019s gleeful politic, his own epistles and revelations for making the ill-informed even more so, and the mad madder.<\/p>\n

From the snippets previewed, Kim\u2019s video installation Skin Time, of the time 2.04 embossed on actual skin just begs for wild rhetoric. In this universe of flesh, Kim Chiew\u2019s feverish installation is testament to Bertolt Brecht\u2019s, \u201cThe human race tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What\u2019s left of kisses? Wounds however, leave scars\u201d. Skin Time is an exploration of things ephemeral, of illusions, of life being equally enigmatic as it is vulgar. And when one has been hurt terribly, the bleeding never really stops.<\/p>\n

And there is more. Much more. His acrylics and markers on canvas, as seen in White Over White, Black Over Black Map is a gruelling account of his love\/ hate\/ indifferent attitudes to current political events, the breakdown of maps observed in other pieces a sober reminder of what could and would happen if we remain in our comfortably-soporific state for extended periods of time, and the broken-down flag in Boundary Fluidity represents lands made sterile from unforgiving, brilliant tempests which rage viciously.<\/p>\n

In Beware As You Become The Centre, these three artists\u2019 works are gritty and beautifully unapologetic. As he splits from his primary physical form and takes on different roles, we see three sets of ego: him as the royal court jester with the chilling sense of humour, we see him as the instigator\/ rebel questioning traditions and accepted ways, and we see him as the contemplative entity who cunningly howls of fury and love.<\/p>\n

Sarah NH Vogeler
\n18 September 2015<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beware As You Become The Centre \u2013 the three faces of Chong Kim Chiew by Sarah Vogeler \u201cThe path I choose through the maze makes me what I am. I am not only a thing, but also a way of being--one of many ways--and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to [...]","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"portfolio_entries":[17],"class_list":["post-6741","portfolio","type-portfolio","status-publish","hentry","portfolio_entries-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weiling-gallery.com\/gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio\/6741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weiling-gallery.com\/gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weiling-gallery.com\/gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/portfolio"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weiling-gallery.com\/gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weiling-gallery.com\/gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio\/6741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6744,"href":"https:\/\/weiling-gallery.com\/gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio\/6741\/revisions\/6744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weiling-gallery.com\/gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weiling-gallery.com\/gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6741"},{"taxonomy":"portfolio_entries","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weiling-gallery.com\/gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio_entries?post=6741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}