Asian art continues to strike out into venues that, in most circumstances, would be considered out of the ordinary for its perceived content. And there is no hard and fast rule about the audiences that are most likely to be receptive to contemporary works from Asia or by European residents drawing on their heritage.
Two artists in the growing stable of ArtChinese London consultancy, Heena Kim (b1979, Korea).and Raymond Yap (b1966, Kuala Lumpur), are having their work exhibited at the Fire Station, the new art centre in the heart of Windsor,
Recent St Martin's MA graduate Heena Kim creates semi-human, semi-animal or insect-like 'creatures', living in their own inhuman world, painted on canvas or wood. According to the artist, the works resulted from a mixture of memories and imagination, and given their own 'fantasyland' to live in on the canvas. The 'creatures' hide in spaces, occasionally spilling out into the void, she explains.
Heena Kim says, "I believe that the unique images connected with human and other creatures' bodies in my paintings have come from my unconsciousness or memories that mix with my experience and past thoughts. Those kinds of things are connected with the human body which could symbolise me and affect to create stories with them. 'My creatures' exist in a space separated from the real world. They can be free and safe in the space looking like human internal organs."
Describing himself as a 'process painter', Yap's semi-abstract, bright paintings allow much of the process to chance. Unlike the Abstract Expressionists' grand, energetic gestures that set off myriad trends towards this type of painting in the West, Yap's work can take weeks and months to develop. He slowly adds layers of primarily gloss paint onto aluminium or board and waits for time to transform the surface. The final outcome, as in Vertical Horizon (gloss paint on MDF 91.5 x 60.5 cm, pictured right) is governed by a combination of his decisions of type of paint, frequency and quantity of application, timing and method.
Yap explains, "My images are 'littered with incident' and although I exert a degree of control in order to facilitate these 'incidents', their consequences are very much open to the play of chance and their history becomes a fascinating series of encounters between control and chance, between the ordered and the arbitrary. It is this tension between the appearance of order arrived through the surrender to spontaneity and chance that gives these works a certain tension."
While Kim's explorations of unruly memories from deep within her mind are painted in vivid clarity, Yap's public, clear shapes are metamorphosed into abstracted forms, shrouded in layers. These artists are making the private public, and the public private, outside in, and inside out.
London-based ArtChinese represents mainly artists from China, but also emerging artists from around the world.
Inside Out: Heena Kim and Raymond Yap, 1 June-18 July 2009, The Fire Station Art Centre, Old Court House, St Leonards Road, Windsor, SL4. T 01753 866 865. ArtChinese | www.artchinese.co.uk
