"OPEN MY HEART, EASE MY TASK, LOOSEN THE KNOT ON MY TONGUE"
Solo Exhibition at Chan + Hori Contemporary
4 May - 9 June 2019
"Open My Heart, Ease My Task, Loosen The Knot On My Tongue" takes is reference from the prayer of Moses when he was commanded to face the Pharaoh (Quran 20:25-27, Exodus 4:10). As much as it was for courage, the title points to a desire for ease and mutual communication. For every artist, art is essentially a vocabulary in the form of visual and experiential manifestations, one that surpasses language and cultures. And while many artists in Southeast Asia (and the world) continue to engage their audience through bold images and sharp critiques, Speak Cryptic chooses to draw upon the poetic based on personal histories and dreamlike edifices from an introspective vantage point.
Through his drawings, paintings, installations, public art and performance-based work, Speak Cryptic translates the symptoms and consequences of society's capital-centric normalization through personal inquiries that stretch from ancestral migration, ethnic dislocation, civic gentrification, and the embodiment of alternate values from popular culture as personal coping and identity-forming mechanisms. Like artist such as Raymond Pettibon, Yoshitomo Nara and Barry McGee who arrived at contemporary art via urban art origins, Speak Cryptic forges a distinctively personal vocabulary to enable his art to engage an extremely diverse audience population, disrupting quintessential appraisals of contemporary art.
Speak Cryptic's practice investigates the popular and underground cultures that permeates one's ethnic identity, referencing the visual language of comic and music. Using himself as a model, he speaks of distancing from Malay culture, blind faith in adopting Western sub-cultures as surrogate identities; and the pressures of living in a restrictive and constantly-changing urban environment.
Solo Exhibition at Chan + Hori Contemporary
4 May - 9 June 2019
"Open My Heart, Ease My Task, Loosen The Knot On My Tongue" takes is reference from the prayer of Moses when he was commanded to face the Pharaoh (Quran 20:25-27, Exodus 4:10). As much as it was for courage, the title points to a desire for ease and mutual communication. For every artist, art is essentially a vocabulary in the form of visual and experiential manifestations, one that surpasses language and cultures. And while many artists in Southeast Asia (and the world) continue to engage their audience through bold images and sharp critiques, Speak Cryptic chooses to draw upon the poetic based on personal histories and dreamlike edifices from an introspective vantage point.
Through his drawings, paintings, installations, public art and performance-based work, Speak Cryptic translates the symptoms and consequences of society's capital-centric normalization through personal inquiries that stretch from ancestral migration, ethnic dislocation, civic gentrification, and the embodiment of alternate values from popular culture as personal coping and identity-forming mechanisms. Like artist such as Raymond Pettibon, Yoshitomo Nara and Barry McGee who arrived at contemporary art via urban art origins, Speak Cryptic forges a distinctively personal vocabulary to enable his art to engage an extremely diverse audience population, disrupting quintessential appraisals of contemporary art.
Speak Cryptic's practice investigates the popular and underground cultures that permeates one's ethnic identity, referencing the visual language of comic and music. Using himself as a model, he speaks of distancing from Malay culture, blind faith in adopting Western sub-cultures as surrogate identities; and the pressures of living in a restrictive and constantly-changing urban environment.
Images courtesy of Lee Dong Sheng / Chan + Hori Contemporary