INTERVIEW WITH THE MIRROR

RAHMAN IDRIS ABAS
(“The most significant way artists can do is change our way of seeing.” -Milton Glaser.)

What prompts your curiosity in art? I have always wanted to know people’s reaction when they see my painting. To make them think as I do, and how I can create the feeling of familiarity when the audience witnesses my painting. For example, when you see a certain object or subject, you would know what it is, but at the same time, you doubt yourself. Do you really know what you are looking at?

Why bother creating such peculiar subjects? I believe that, as an artist, we do not simply imitate the things we see (nature).The implicit role for the artist is to estrange the familiar, to challenge our expectations in such a way as to get us to pay attention, to see new things. As Anais Nin said; “We don’t see things as they are, but instead, we see them as we are.” It means that the audience wants our opinions on what we see, not how good we imitate things. Art is no longer a process of imitation but it has turned into a process of exploring new possibilities and challenges our expectation. For example, Abstract and Realistic art are simply two different forms of approach, and no one can say that one approach is any better than the other. Either way, beauty should be a part of any work of art. So, we should do things as we believe it should be done.

What do you think about new ideas? New ideas always come in very unfamiliar ways, and sometimes silly, or both. Most respectful artists or creative people will probably do something too original, too controversial, and too silly to be accepted by the audience at first sight. Here are some examples; Imagine the world where all people are wonderful, and we could produce anything we want without restrictions. We would have the freedom to realise all our fantasies, unfettered by the audience. But what would we do then? We would eventually react against this and say that this kind of life is boring. How can we be dull? Let’s do it badly, make it ugly and let’s make it really cheap. That is the nature of a creative person. All artists and creative people need something to rebel against. It is what gives our lives pleasure and excitement. It is us who make our lives more exciting.

Why do you use women figures in your paintings? You may see things differently from the way others see it. This difference will help you select the subjects that are attuned to your taste. For me, the subject always comes second when producing an artwork, because the subject in my painting can be just about anything, but is still within my range of interest. The most important thing in my painting is how I represent the subject in some sort of unfamiliar or strange way because the aim was to create the feeling of strangeness when people see my painting. So it doesn’t matter, it could be anything you are familiar with. In my case, I was influenced by many digital and comic illustrations where most of them use the female figurative in their illustrations. I believe their intention is to seek attention from the audience, just as I do.

What is your inspiration in making your artwork? As I mentioned earlier, my inspiration always come when I see other illustrations artwork. I really like to see the colours they used in their illustrations. Sometimes I do find them nonsensical, because they look nothing like what we would find in the real world. I was also influenced by the drawing of Robert Longo in his exhibition (Men in the Cities), in which he portrayed human figures, specifically businesspeople, seemingly floating in mid-air in an empty background, embellished in greyscale. The idea of making strange things came from Russian formalism, an influential school of literary criticism, introduced by Victor Shklovsky.

So, you mentioned that you are influenced by other illustrators. As an artist, what made you different from them? For me, the difference between an artist and an illustrator is just based on how they question their artwork. Basically, illustrators create their artwork based on commercial need, and are only for the purpose of communication. As an artist, I think the most important thing in art is the pleasure you feel in “doing”, being the utmost basic thing. This touches the issue of freedom, as they would have to deal with a lot of limitations in producing their artwork because they always have to follow the customers’ needs. But as an artist, I do not take artwork simply as a way of communicating, but as a statement. What I meant is that the artwork represents you; your way of thinking and seeing things transforms art into a heavy and serious matter, in fact.


RADIN ERUS
(“Simplicity means the achievement of maximum effects using minimum means.” -Koichi Kawana)

How much you can explain about your painting? We live in a world ruled by information. Much of our lives are involved with the consumption of information. We read the newspaper in the morning. We sit in meetings at work. We check our e-mails every hour. We read billboards on the highway while driving home. We watch the news on television. We surf the internet and check blogs. Our minds become so full of information that the words become noise. We feel tired from the constant demand on our attention; at work, at home, on weekends. More is not less. Less is more. Clarity is more. Personally, when I am struck with a lot of information, my mind shuts off and I move on to the next thing. To be heard and understood, it is vital to keep things simple. In the field of visual arts, I attempt to absorb the visual information and reduce their complexity to produce a simpler image with feather information. I believe, in order to see something, it is enough to see their true essence to gain the true information.

What drives you curious? My curiosities begin with a question; what’s an image or a picture to us? Is it a memory or is it just a beautiful thing to display? What is the capacity of one image that we truly need to make sense with? That stirs the curious side of me.

What inspired you? I am of the generation that lives with all of the new technology. I believe most around my age love the stunning animation, the exciting video games and the entire unreal world that was created in these new times. I have seen and felt the essence, and that was the only thing we really need to understand and recognise things through this technological era. All of these inspired me because I find that life cannot to be too difficult if we put our abilities into action.

How do you create your art? I absorb the information, and reduce the complexity to retain only the true essence. I believe less is always more and more will never be less. Manually, I start with an image from photography, and then on Photoshop, I would do the editing from shape to shape, layer by layer using the useful polygonal lasso tool. However, the deduction work does not end there, on the computer. While making the actual-sized drawing on tracing paper (I call it my blueprint), I would still remove anything that seems complex in my images. Doing this kind of work makes me realise that perfection comes not when we think that nothing else is there to be added, but when it has nothing else to take away.

In your opinion, what is really important in doing art? To me, art is about the intellectual property that is from the reality we have been going through in life. Art will become anything; all of the people’s perceptions or acceptation in art always relates to the mind frame of the audience and artists themselves who both look at and do the art. So, the important thing in making art is how the statement builds up with the pieces.

What sort of message do you wish to communicate through your art? I believe art comes from the reality of our life. Creating it was like a lesson to the next step in our maturity, and personally, art is like a therapy to me. Whatever I do when producing art feels like I am writing a book for myself and keep sharing it with other people. While continuing my art, it feels like I always keep improving myself and my thoughts to become a better person.


EDROGER ROSILI
("It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures." -Vincent Van Gogh)

How did you come out with the idea of your works? I began drawing when I read comics, and becoming a comic artist is what I wanted initially, but when I did Fine Arts in college, I turned to paintings. Though, I still have this comic streak inside of me, which I think affects my view on images as a property of time and space, as practiced in comics. How the images and compositions, can suggest a sense of movement, pace and character experience in its discipline. Then I play around with the idea of the properties in photography, about the qualities it can provide us, on how images behave as a visual experience.

What attracts you to spontaneous photography? There is a particular moment, when we are in a state of giving evaluation or judgement upon artworks, in this case, an experience of a photographic failure. It is okay for me if anyone would rather argue to see it as another quality of the ambiguous, but for me, what is more valuable is the possible wisdom provided or any of our moment of experience. And most of the time, we don’t want to look at them, and we miss the part that doesn’t fit our personal paradigm. That act, the presumptions, or the moment of don’t-want-to-look-at-it, as we refuse to acknowledge a certain quality, really strikes me. Sometimes you can allow uncertainty to exist; the ever-changing and never constant. These are the kinds of ideas needed to understand the world.

How does your idea operate in your works? I really don’t expect the audience to look through my lenses when looking at my works, because I just want to suggest an experience, and they can react to the paintings however they want to, in their own reality. I think I’m done when I have given the random snapshots of some kind of important sort of acknowledgement, and put it in discussion between different perspectives.

Why paint them if you could just print them into a photograph and put them up in a frame? Why reproduce the reproduction? To me, a painting weighs heavier than a drawing or photograph, because in the process, those images were taken care more seriously to maintain the worth of effort of the brushwork and colour-mixing discipline. When I paint the image, I want it to carry a statement like a bold decision, however insignificant it is. Painting back the printed photographs, to me, it feels like putting back the ready-mades, back on canvas.

What are the challenges in doing your piece? The process of picking up the images can be very difficult although it is actually pretty simple. In the future, I’m planning to change my manner of picking up the images into a more pure and innocent style. I mean, I think I cannot just choose which one to paint, for any decisive action must have mixed with my unconscious judgements. It’ll be like I am purposely creating the other quality of a photo; that I am purposely doing the opposite of a good photo. This is very difficult, when I need to trust accidents, and not to trust myself. But I also must not ‘learn’ to trust accident.

What is your favourite reaction from the audience? One of them hit me with, “Why do you always avoid the faces in your pictures?” This really helps me in explaining my points. It was the idea of: What else can anyone appreciate in the picture apart from their own faces? What else can we expect from the behaviours of picture-making? I mean, images and the visual culture have been a part of our very life. It intrigues me to see how it works and how can it affect our appreciation towards visual experience.


MIOR MOHD NAFIS MOHD ZAIN

Describe your earlier works. My earlier days in making sculpture artwork were the fabrications of forms using metal. At these times, as a student, I was greatly influenced by the works of Raja Shahriman. What I admire most in his works was the elements of sharp forms and strength. The one I made for the Beijing Olympic was one of the pieces strongly affected by these elements.

How did you happen to work with fibreglass material? After completing my Diploma in Fine Arts at UiTM Malacca, I did part time jobs helping my lecturers making their sculptures. For six months, I’ve been working with techniques that used fibreglass material, and I started playing around with new ideas for what I can make use from these techniques in making my own sculptures.

Where do you get your ideas from? The idea hit me while I was flipping through art books, that I saw marble sculptures by Michelangelo like Pieta, Moses and many more, especially the ones that have high realistic detailing in the form of cloth, drapery and of course, the excellent figures. It really fascinates me, the way they handle the carving work to achieve the soft character of drapery and cloth out from solid stone. I found out that they did a lot of studies on such matters before they begin the job. The best drawing I really admire is a study for Drapery for Seated Figure by Da Vinci. It was then I began to develop interest in applying that idea about the form of cloth’s softness into my works.

What were your challenges in making your piece? I’m currently still in my studies, so as a student, I’m always in a tight financial situation. Plus, all these fibreglass materials and resin are quite expensive, and it’s quite difficult to find cheaper supply. Another problem is that I need to experiment with different fabrics that really suits best and easy to control when getting it mixed up with the resin. And then, working with fibreglass materials takes a very long time, especially at the finishing process. From my experience, it’s very simple and easy to just get the form, but the finishing process will usually take longer hours.

What is your idea that you want to share through your artwork, and who influenced you the most? In the sculptures that I made, it was more about understanding the being and existence of objects which involves the audience’s perception in making value of the being of an object through given form and space. I like looking at Anish Kapoor’s sculptures, and he once wrote, “I explored what I see as deep-rooted metaphysical polarities: presence and absence, being and non-being, place and non-place and the solid and the intangible”. From that, I then depart to develop my ideas emphasizing more on the problems of perception in my works.

What do you hope for in your work? I only hope that the audience will be curious about the forms I created and what it is suggesting. The questions about the absence of the real objects, and perceptions of what is seen from the form I made, is what I hope the sculptures can project, about what I am trying to say.