http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82IGrItJWQw

@_@ this artist plays along Shahriman’s buidling methods and spiritual issues but the intensity …phuaaaaaarrrrrhhhhhhh

here are some more famous science/art mashups!

Turner Artist: Roger Hiorns
http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2009/february/199580.html

DNA art
http://cenblog.org/2008/11/18/inorganic-living/

Po-mo self-portraits with Iphones
http://guyswithiphones.com

Quantum Objects
http://julianvossandreae.com/acp/

The more fluid series he showed before at Balai held more potential. Those figures were made of these long thin sharp twisted pieces that had both quality of muscley sinews and whispy make-up of the ’soul’. He appeared on his way to an absract aesthetic paradise.

Instead of going there, he makes a mega show of these tired figures again, dragging his fans down to a kind of B grade action movie aesthetics. Come on, even Mahathir’s bored expression is telling you that these flakey Jihadist wannabes are a big waste of metal. I suppose Dr.M must have thought: dielah tokoh artis moden ni, macam mana boleh capai Visi 2020? For all the Machevelian jobs Mahathir did, one cannot deny that he had a (2)big hard on for making Malaysia a more ‘modern’ country.

And what do we end up with? Fuckin rounds and rounds of DIY pathetic looking bullets that doubles as a an Indian’s Cheif headdress or Geigeresque spines? Dude..mintalah from the Army or Air Force some empty bullet shells. Jangan malu.

The major installation had one figure with bullets firing off from the ketiak, and hair like super sayan but non of the excitement (I haven’t seen much local stuff lately but the best home made warrior face-off picture of the 21st Century I’ve seen so far is Mun Kao’s Thai Cock boxing painting).

Their metal bodies, so damn shite. Each piece so thick and crude, it looked like as if it was made by some con job contractor who was given a postcard picture of Museo Bilbao.

The drawings and paintings of them…were they done before? or after the sculptures were made? Bah why bother…

Ok sure it’s a lot of hardwork for one man to sculp and an hour to rant this but is hardwork still the main criteria for us to appreciate art? Don’t we want our senior artists to climb higher or just let them stagnate in mediocre formulaic figures?

I hope the next series will explore the more abstract metal ballish forms that were also on show. I actually enjoyed those. They could have represented the core of the warrior’s soul, a mind in action a la the way samurai warriors visualize different strategies before even drawing out their sword, or just really nice looking chunks of stuff welded together.

Multhalib is a counter example of a more modern scultor but even then, there’s still not enough experimenting with more advanced fabrication technology, new materials, and new ideas. We love our rusty, low tech, hand-made stuff which in this day and age, feels like such a forced signature for ‘lookz!i made art, i can haz cheezeburger naow?’, much like the drips many painters are doing. Is this a way of rebeling and saying ‘Fuck you Mahathir for dragging us into modernity?’

Should we continue this unchallenging path, our sculptors here will always be trapped with works that are only one level above those giant Hibiscus produced by DBKL.

Hmmm…maybe we can save the show but cutting it down in quantity, and put a Shariman with some conceptual installations next to it as a group show.

As for a solo, I suggest that he fights in arenas much smaller than Petronas in the future. No point seing all these warriors looking so lost and fighting each other neh?

rant out. sleep.