Abstraction

Richard Wong Chin-Kim is a Malaysian artist who indulges in memories and mindscapes.He is an artist drawing on the artist within and drawing on the right side of the brain. His approach in art is that of the right-mode --- intuitive, spatial, onoverbal, simultaneous and perceptual.

In his abstracted mindscapes based on submerged memories of places seen, noted and processed, the sub-conscious is permitted to roam. The artist is a much-travelled person, roaming Planet Earth in search of art and collectibles, tea and sympathy and Shaolin martial art and health-cum-longevity. As an individual, he is interested and interesting, keen to share his multifanous interests, which ranged from watercolour-painting to Chinese tea-ceremony, with others.

Lingering memos and memories of China, Nepal, India, Australia and so forth provided the impetus to launch his series of dreamy, lyrical mindscapes.

In his classic, The Meaning of Art, the late great Sir Herbert Read posited: "We must not be afraid of this word 'abstract'. All art is primarily abstract."

In his elucidating tone, understanding Abstract Art, Frank Whiford opines: Whether the word abstract or a synonym is used, a definition remains difficult, perhaps impossible to achieve. Just as all art is primarily abstract, all abstract art is, in a sense, representational. Some abstract paintings intentionally allude to aspects of the familiar world; others unintentionally evoke them! It is difficult to invent an image which will not remind viewer of something. The urge to see a face in every circle is irresistible. Even a perfect horizontal line bisecting a rectangle will look like a landscape."

Leonardo da Vinci, in his Notebooks, noted: "It should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire or clouds or mud or like places in which you may find really marvellous ideas."

In Richard Wong's abstraction, the landscape is the basis of his theme. The mindscapes are derived from the various components of the lands and forms of the sky, land and sea punctuated with mists, rocks and erosions which served to enrich the textural images. The mindscapes represent his cryptomnesia or concealed recollection burst forth in terms of glows, flows, cracks, stains, veils, dribbles, dots and splashes resulting in positive and negative textural effects that recalled the Abstract Expressionist renditions of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Morris Louis, Helen Frankenthaler and Sam Francis in variations. In his visual essays, there is the rhythmic beat of the forces of nature that spells poetry.

Employing oil and acrylics on canvas and equipped with brushes, pallete knives for various textural effects, Richard Wong concocted a variety of images that, seen in the light of da Vince's slant, are a notion of poetry in motion. Altogether the marks and stains challenge one of a variety of reading of places evocative and poetic.

Frank Whiford reminds us: "Abstract art approached with an open mind can suggest entirely new ways of seeing. Knowledge, of the painter's ideas and intentions, experience, gained from looking at pictures, and open-mindedness: these represent the viewers' contribution, the key to forming judgments and enjoying abstract art."

Back in 1890, Maurice Denis noted perceptively: "It must be remembered that any painting - before being a war horse, a nude woman, or some anecdote - is essentially a flat surface covered with colours and arranged in a certain order."

In conclusion, kindly allow me to share with you a thought from the poet Percy Bysshe Shelly:
The mind in creation is as a fading coal which some invisible influence, like an inconstant mind, awakens to transitory brightness; this arises from within....and the conscious portions of our nature are unprophetic either of its approach or of its departure."

Verily, truly. food for meditation.

Teng Chok-Dee

Lecturer-Curator

LaSalle-SIA,

a college of the arts,

Singapore