Chin Kong Yee is a contemporary Malaysian artist. He has labeled his style as Actuality Accorded Painting (AAP), whereby, in painting and portraying an object, it has to have existed, and have undergone the process of being real, in order for it to be translated onto the canvas as Art. AAP, is basically the act of seeing-where the past, the present and the future is enveloped into one when one looks at an object. Once eye contact has been made through AAP, the images become the past.
Kong Yee’s works evoke a somewhat surreal feel about them. By combining the present, past and future through a depiction of two perspectives (realistic and unrealistic) his paintings have an exciting, dramatic edge about them that draws the viewer into his space.
Chin Kong Yee was born in 1973, in Malaysia, where he graduated from the Central Academy of Art. The large and detailed panoramas portrayed on Kong Yee's canvases have a significant audience of local and international collectors. His works can be found in numerous private and public collections such as The National Visual Arts Gallery, Shearn Delamore, Wong & Partners, The Aliya and Farouk Khan Collection, HSBC, Anika Insurance Brokers, and the United Overseas Bank.
Published on Feb 12, 2013
Chin Kong Yee paints the streets and culture of Kuala Lumpur on canvas, with an added dramatic edge.
Exhibitions
2000
June 2000 `World in Square Feet’ Central Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur
July 2000 `Colours of Brazil’ Isetan Gallery, Kuala Lumpur
Dec 2000 ` 3 Man Show’ Anugerah Gallery Star Hill Lobby, Kuala Lumpur
Nov 2000 `Philip Morris Group of Companies ASEAN Art Awards 2000 `
National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur
2001
June 2001 ` Locals Only! ` Gallerie Taksu, Kuala Lumpur
Oct 2001 ` Manusia ` N.N. Gallery Kuala Lumpur
2oo2
April 2002 `Identities Who we are`National Art Gallery,Kuala Lumpur
Oct 2002 'Figuring Splendour'Metro Fine Art,Kuala Lumpur
2003
April 2003, `Undulating Spaces’Townhouse Gallery,Kuala Lumpur
Chin Kong Yee seeks his audience to feel and see what he has experienced in the creation of his art work. He has labeled his style as Actuality Accorded Painting (AAP), whereby, in painting and portraying an object, it has to have existed, and have undergone the process of being real, in order for it to be translated onto the canvas as Art. AAP, is basically the act of seeing-where the past, the present and the future is enveloped into one when one looks at an object. Once eye contact has been made through AAP, the images become the past. This can be seen in some of his cityscape works, namely Kull Mariyanan where “half of a moving taxi” gradually fades into the facade of a building.
The same theme is seen in his figurative works, where the model is painted over a period of a few hours, and thus never really stays in one position (movements and expressions however slight, are continually undulating). As the artist aptly says, ‘ / cannot subjectively decide how she looks, / can only portray her according to a combination of changing expressions, over a period of time... because the affinity between different individuals changes very subtly with every moment”.
To this artist, nothing is ever stagnant. Images are changing and evolving as you look at them. Space can never be measured or fixed, it is only present in the mobility of Time.
Kong Yee’s works evoke a some what surreal feel about them.By combining the present, past and future through a depiction of two perspectives (realistic and unrealistic) his paintings have an exciting, dramatic edge about them that draws the viewer into his space.
Actuality According Painting (AAP), the portraying object it have to be realistically exist and had to undergo the quality of being real.
An existent reality without undergo the process of experiment and contact, that is not reality. It is merely a scheduled reality.
The AAP is a phenomenon of seeing, interlace by the contact and experience of subjectivity and objectivity world.
Seeing phenomenon means develop and making of the mark system in spatial and sight.
When seeing this system begin to operate and produce, marks being trace continuously, and because of difference it creates an initial image, and between these mark new images are being form continuously, they become the past once the contact has been make.
An absolute presence that is impossibility, images is situated endlessly in an uncertain circumstance, they can only reorganize and transform.
The actuality of spatial cannot be fixed, it just present in the mobility of time.
2000 Philip Morris Group of Companies ASEAN Art Awards 2000
Honorable Mention
Chin Kong Yee seeks his audience to feel and see what he has experienced in the creation of his art work. He has labeled his style as Actuality Accorded Painting (AAP), whereby, in painting and portraying an object, it has to have existed, and have undergone the process of being real, in order for it to be translated onto the canvas as Art. AAP, is basically the act of seeing-where the past, the present and the future is enveloped into one when one looks at an object. Once eye contact has been made through AAP, the images become the past. This can be seen in some of his cityscape works, namely Kull Mariyanan where “half of a moving taxi” gradually fades into the facade of a building.
The same theme is seen in his figurative works, where the model is painted over a period of a few hours, and thus never really stays in one position (movements and expressions however slight, are continually undulating). As the artist aptly says, ‘ / cannot subjectively decide how she looks, / can only portray her according to a combination of changing expressions, over a period of time... because the affinity between different individuals changes very subtly with every moment”.
To this artist, nothing is ever stagnant. Images are changing and evolving as you look at them. Space can never be measured or fixed, it is only present in the mobility of Time.
Kong Yee’s works evoke a some what surreal feel about them.By combining the present, past and future through a depiction of two perspectives (realistic and unrealistic) his paintings have an exciting, dramatic edge about them that draws the viewer into his space.
Actuality According Painting (AAP), the portraying object it have to be realistically exist and had to undergo the quality of being real.
An existent reality without undergo the process of experiment and contact, that is not reality. It is merely a scheduled reality.
The AAP is a phenomenon of seeing, interlace by the contact and experience of subjectivity and objectivity world.
Seeing phenomenon means develop and making of the mark system in spatial and sight.
When seeing this system begin to operate and produce, marks being trace continuously, and because of difference it creates an initial image, and between these mark new images are being form continuously, they become the past once the contact has been make.
An absolute presence that is impossibility, images is situated endlessly in an uncertain circumstance, they can only reorganize and transform.
The actuality of spatial cannot be fixed, it just present in the mobility of time.
In his latest exhibition, storyteller Chin Kong Yee reflects on life as he sees it, writes Sarah NH Vogeler
THERE is something about Chin Kong Yee’s works, which one immediately gets, in part, his vast canvases, which are impressive enough to warrant a great deal of attention. But more so, it is his abstract contemplation of Kuala Lumpur’s skyline ranging from the ever-bustling Brickfields to the indefatigable Petaling Street, of places we see often but think of little, feral, unyielding — Chin fixates on what’s exactly before him, and not upon the world to come.
“This is it,” he says outright, “it’s Ginsberg’s Howl, incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind.”
Infinite Canvas, his latest exhibition at Wei Ling gallery, is a study done by a quiet spectator, each piece exquisitely finished and each scene intensely personal. There’s the solitary Chinese immigrant in one corner, the Indonesian worker anticipating the day’s end, the flower vendor consumed in his own activities, people milling about like apparitions from Lovecraft’s weird fiction.
My Father’s Noodle House is homage to Chin’s patriarch. The despair he felt after his father’s death in 2011 was an impossible weight and a terrible emptiness opened in him. Chin’s grief was absolute and for a time, he was inconsolable. “Life is terrifyingly subject to heartbreak and change, sunny and bright for a while, stormy and cruel the next. Very much like the city,” he reflects.
A day’s sojourn, observing the city spread out before him, Chin marvelled at how curiously “old” everything looked, fatigued and lonesome. It was as if she bared her soul for the taking and spared nothing for herself. Just like his father.
Chin painted his mother, uncles, cousins and friends, his father primed as a central figure, Chin’s valiant King.
Chin’s Raining echoes Gilbert’s “This rain, the blues gone grey, and the browns gone grey”, people running from both habit and impulse, others waiting for the rain to abate, with vague expressions and nervous energy. “It is remarkable how these variations in paces create a kind of harmony that lingers,” Chin muses. Raining is a splendid panorama of contrasts, a rich drapery of both the subtle and intense, of two cadences, which are strangely beautiful.
Jalan Cheng Lock and Kedai Kopi Li Fong was started in June 2011, but completed just before Infinite Canvas came to light. When asked why, Chin, quiet and introspective by nature, grew even quieter, which to the observer, is somewhat startling. “I stopped working on it after my father’s passing.”
As a student, this particular street was a frequent sight, one he crossed daily. For his mother, a restaurant within its folds was a regular haunt in her youth. He saw the painting with fresh eyes, the juxtaposed memories gifted a renewed vigour and Chin sought to illustrate just that — his mother’s perfumed recollections amid his own pedestrian observation.
Timeless is a study of fragmented emotions, of people going about their lives, the shifting of the hour, nerves on edge, jokes exchanged, the sun at its peak. Chin sees the city as both impersonal and personal, of mad and ruthless routine. Part of this artist’s charm lies in his innate ability to capture sentiments in an almost off-handed way. After all, Chin says: “Taking yourself too seriously is not always good.”
Bersih 3.0/ April 28 he says, is a representation of profound human emotions,of worry, trepidation, excitement, anticipation. Plus the colours before him, Chin was struck by the sea of yellows and greens against the grey of the pavements. “It had nothing to do with politics. It was an unbounded richness in hues that beguiled me. Beauty. That was what I saw. And that was what I painted.”
Jalan Tun H.S. Lee — Da Ma Cai — Indian Temple are paintings comprising two panels, which by deft alignment, results in 10 different images, Chin’s whimsical interpretation of the infinite. “In this instance, I believe that less is more and vice-versa. It’s really up to the audience.”
Wei Ling, who had represented Chin for a decade, recalls fondly: “When we first met, Chin was painting in his mother’s kitchen. It was an unforgettable sight — the woks and canvases. There was a slight, sticky situation with communication and we ended up speaking in Malay. We had his first solo in 2003 and now, 10 years later, his skills have developed stunningly, inspired in part by his extensive travels, and the gradual unearthing of his persona and accomplishments. There’s much to see and feel in his paintings — pleasure, contemplation, our own faces in them.”
An active member of the F Club, Chin along with artists Kow Leong Kiang, Shia Yih Ying, Kishore Sahoo, Noor Mahnun Mohamed, Maslin Ramly, Marvin Chan and Bayu Utomo Radjikin meet regularly for discourses, and delving into what they do best, painting.
“We’re a little like the Wednesday Art Group, (founded by Peter Harris in 1952, with members including Syed Ahmad Jamal and Jolly Koh), and exhibit regularly. Mostly figurative. The gratification of this pursuit is immense. We draw inspiration from each other.”
This is Chin Kong Yee, a soul delightfully turbulent, in a perpetual half-smiling, half-dreamy countenance and whom, given a choice between a piece of canvas and a plate of roti canai, would without batting an eye lid, pick the former.
He has come a long way since Undulating Spaces (his first solo), this admirer of Cezanne, Matisse and Pissarro.
“My first trip to Paris was incredibly serendipitous. There was a Cezanne and Pissarro exhibition. It changed me. It changed everything,” he says. Subsequent visits to Berlin, Romania and other parts of Europe opened him to a world more audible, one filled with romance, of splendour.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour, said Blake. And Chin is only at the beginning of his triumph, the road ahead pregnant with possibilities, blazing the way for masterpieces to unfold as he dives and rises to the highest altitudes.
Read more: ART: Collected memories - Sunday Life & Times - New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/life-times/sunday-life-times/art-collected-memories-1.211944#ixzz2Of3uq4ha
Feb 2017- 18@8 RIGHT HERE! RIGHT NOW!, Wei-Ling Contemporary, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
August 2016- Art Stage Jakarta 2016, Sheraton Grand Jakarta Gandaria City Hotel, Jakarta, Indonesia
April 2016- Art Beijing 2016, Agricultural Exhibition Centre of China,Beijing,China
April 2016- Young art Taipei 2016,Sheraton Grande Taipei,Taiwan
Jan 2016 - Art Stage Singapore 2016, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore
Dec 2015 - 18@8 Heirlooms, Wei-Ling Contemporary, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Dec 2015-Art Kaohsiung 2015, THE PIER-2 ART CENTER, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
February 2015, Being Human: Figuratism of 16 Malaysian Artists,White Box, Kuala Lumpur
January 2015 , Being Human: Figuratism of 16 Malaysian Artists,The F klub,Atrstage Singapore 2015,Singapore
Sept 2014 Korean International Art Fair 2014 (KIAF) ,Seoul
Jun 2014-The Peak group show – ‘HO MIA’ ,Wei-Ling Contemporary,Kuala Lumpur.
Feb 2014-Flesh,The F Klub,Kuala Lumpur
Jan 2013-Seated,The F Klub ,Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia
Sept 2012-A decade of collecting,Timeless,Wei-ling gallery,Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia
Feb 2012-Skin,The Fklub,House of MATAHATI,Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia
Jan2011-Art Stage Singapore 2011,Singapore
Dec2010-Absolut 18@8, Wei-Ling Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Feb 2010-Tiger Show, Wei-Ling Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
April 2008- China International Gallery Exposition 2008,Beijing,China .
April 2008- Mind Body & Soul - MBSIII,Wei-Ling Galery.Kuala Lumpur.
Nov2007- Annual 18@8 exhibition, Wei-Ling Galery.Kuala Lumpur.
April 2007- "EYE-llusions" Wei-Ling Galery.Kuala Lumpur.
Feb 2006 -1st ART Exhibition ,The MuGung Hwa Centre for Korean Culture & Art,Kuala Lumpur.
June 2006 -“zweihundertzweiundsiebziegeinhalbstunden und mehr “Galerie Tanner,Germany.
Nov 2006-“Mind Body and Soul II”, Wei-LingGallery.
Dec 2006-“ 18@8, Karachi, Pakistan”Amin Gulgee Gallery.
SEPT 2005 -“18@8” .Wei-LingGallery.
May 2004 -“East-westcontemporaries”,Cluj-napoca Art Museum,Romania.
DEC 2004 “SEOUL International Stars Exibition”,Seoul,Korea.
August 2003-“ Philip Morris Group of Companies Malaysia Art Awards 2003” ,National Art Gallery,Kuala Lumpur.
April 2002-“Identities Who we are” ,National Art Gallery,Kuala Lumpur.
Oct 2002 ”Figuring Splendour”,Metro Fine Art,Kuala Lumpur.
June 2001-“ Locals Only!”,Gallerie Taksu, Kuala Lumpur
Oct 2001 “Manusia “.N.N. Gallery, Kuala Lumpur.
June 2000 “World in Square Feet”, Central Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur.
July 2000- “Colors of Brazil” Isetan Gallery, Kuala Lumpur.
Dec 2000-“3 Man Show” ,Anugerah Gallery Star Hill Lobby, Kuala Lumpur.
Nov 2000 -“Philip Morris Group of Companies ASEAN Art Awards 2000 “,National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur.
April 2003, -"Undulating Spaces"Townhouse Gallery,Kuala Lumpur.
June 2005 -"Cerulean Skies" Townhouse Gallery,Kuala Lumpur.
June 2007 -"SOS Château de Trémazan"Maison des Canons,France.
July 2009-“Reality In Wonderland”, Wei-Ling Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
july2010-new landscape, Wei-Ling Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Jan 2013-Infinite Canvas,Wei-Ling Contemporary,Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia
August 2015_The flower,Weiling Gallery ,Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia.
Awards
2000 Philip Morris Group of Companies ASEAN Art Awards 2000
Honorable Mention
