Exhibition I: Liu Kang

Liu Kang Centennial Exhibition (100 Years) at National Museum of Singapore (29 July 2011 - 16 October 2011)

Pastels

Positive and negative space

Artist and Model, Liu Kang

Vivid colors

Malays

Indians in Singapore

Delineated outlines

Samsui women

Details

The infamous war drawings Chop Suey by Liu Kang during World War II in Changi Prison

Sketches for Life By The River

Life By The River, Liu Kang

Logging

Charcoal

Liu Kang's art materials

Chinese mothers

Fruit sellers (the Chinese race)

Ending off with a quote.

It was an eye-opening experience for me to attend this exhibition and appreciate all of Liu Kang works. This is because I have never seen Liu Kang works before, and prior to attending this exhibtion, I learnt of his works and the huge influence he had on Singapore’s modern art scene. Without whom, I think that Singapore’s Contemporary art scene may have not been like what it is now. Thus, I was really curious and keen to see his works for myself. Yes, his impact on art was phenomenal, and being one of the Singapore pioneers of art, I entered the exhivition with high hopes to be absolutely mind-blown by his works. True enough, I was. 

Works that were displayed included Liu Kang’s most famous works such as Artist and Model and Life by the River. Unfortunately, I am unable to post all my photos on this blog, so I will create another post shortly to showcase some of the photos taken inside the exhibition itself. In addition, these works ranged in terms of medium and subject matter! There were watercolour paintings, traditional Chinese Ink paintings, charcoals, pastels and defenitely the conventional oil works. Liu Kang loved to work with a variety of art mediums and his personal art materials were also put on display. With each medium, he reinforced his art style and showed a form of outstanding maturity in terms of manipulation of his mediums. The x-factor was certainly there (in my opinion).

His subject matters were mainly people, and their lives (abit of reference to Realism; Genre Painting). The depictions of kampong life of early Singapore after World War II was extremely realistic and abundant in his works. He painted people of different races, religion and gender. All of which were painted with such intense passion (bold brushtrokes, impasto use of colour, juxtaposition of rich contrasting colours). His works embodied almost like the essence of a rainbow, as it contained alot of different bright hues like a rainbow (those 7 colours)…

Liu Kang was a Singapore pioneer of the Nanyang Art Movement also for a reason - he made use of traditional Chinese and Western painting techniques. He painted using traditional Chinese Ink (水墨画/书法). He also incorporated Chinese Painting techniques into his oil works, by dilineating his forms with black or white lines.

In terms of composition, I realised that Liu Kang usually played with a more centralised and balanced composition. Also, he likes to make use of perspective especially for his landscape paintings. In Life by the River, he made use of the houses in the background to create a horizon line that will span throughout the background of the painting; brings viewer’s attention to the background of the painting (in some way). With this, I actually did think that Liu Kang was extremely meticulous in terms of his planning for composition. This hypothesis is now confirmed with his many preliminary drawings of the kampong for Life by the River. So, even geniuses like him do preparatory work to produce classic works! Wow. 

What I personally really love about Liu Kang would be his rendering of postive and negative spaces in his pastel works. As we can see from the pastel portrait above, he made use of the paper texture and colour, tweaking it to become the clothes of his subject matter! How awesome and interesting is that?! He successfully blends the background into the clothing, hence playing with the spaces of the work and the medium. 

Having undergoing the World War II in SIngapore, Liu Kang recorded the tortures that the people of Singapore (all ages, and gender) were put through because of the Japanese. He compiled these simple figure drawings into a book called Chop Suey. I do remember my previous history teacher, Ms Wong telling me about this book. Upon reading it, I was rather affected by the pictorials. Babies were brutally killed, people were tortured in the most disgusting ways that one could ever think about (ie satay sticks). Pictures really do speak a thousand words. This book did exemplify this quality…

All in all, I feel that the show was great and enriching. I was not disappointed, not one bit. My favourite thing about the show however, would be the occasional original quotes by Liu Kang being posted on the exhibition walls. They were extremely inspirational. With these small little phrases, I was able to grasp the intention of the artist Liu Kang and his ideologies in art. The previous post (quote), was actually a quote I saw from one of the walls in the exhibition. It has hit me alot. More quotes soon!

What a great/memorable trip.