A TIME TO REMEMBER 2020 is a series that synthesises the whole career and experience of the artist as an art academician in a rather intimidate mixed medium painting on paper. The choice of pure abstraction and spontaneous approaches celebrate the intuitive power of expressing the feelings of joy, sorrow, and melancholy through the articulation of colours, shapes, forms, and textures. I consider my work as state of mind and source for visual enjoyment - ARTIST STATEMENT by Mohamad Khalil Amran
‘A Time to Remember 31 (2020)’ is one of the final abstract work series by Mohamad Khalil Amran before his retirement in 2021. This artistic Oeuvre happened to encrypt some 35 years of the artists Academic-Artistic journey. An expression which manifest the confrontations, as well as negotiations, between Art and Life.
Time and Space paved a crucial role upon articulating the Body-of-Work (BOW) in this compelling art series.
Time marks the inevitable essence of the artists journey, perpetuate through existential binary opposites such as ‘White and Black’, ‘Day and Night’, ‘Vertical and Horizontal’, ‘Parallel and Perpendicular’, encrypted in this ‘A Time to Remember (2020)’ art series. It is through the spontaneous feelings of joy, sorrow, and melancholy, that the artist articulates his colors, strokes, shapes, forms, and textures.
‘Progress’ is one of the fundamental privileges of ‘Time’ in itself. It is through this perseverance, the artist portrays the speed of his oeuvre, in transforming the unfinished into the finish, maneuvering the unexposed, and unexplored territory of the artists picture plane, revealing its emotions, and expressions of essence and presence, altogether encoded as the resilience of the artists repertoire.
The ‘Presence’ of space itself is a conscious experience; A rewarding collections, or re-collections of memories, bombarded in the mindscape which addresses the visions and reflections of the artist, through form, and soul.
Each piece of this mesmerizing Art series, encapsulates the notion that ‘There are no good or bad memories, since it stays with us either way’, and by responding in Making Art, there are rooms for reflection, and reaction to these stimuluses. It is within this room or space, which stimulates the spontaneity of intuition, and impromptu, and unlocks the intimidating ‘Master-Key’, of wild memories, preserve in the Masters intimate ‘Master-Room’, somewhere beyond the physical reality into the metaphysical state, of a spiritual and non-objective reality.
Susanne K. Langer remarks this as the ‘Virtual Space’, where further she ascribes that the Mountain subjects in a painting, does not limits itself to the four corners of the canvas, whereas it is in itself a virtual space of its own. Perhaps It is within this conceptualize idea, that Jackson Pollock confronted his technical ability, in making Action Paintings, where he lays his canvas on the ground, starts from the corners towards the center, vice-versa, shattering the intellectual one-point must perspective, towards celebrating the spontaneity and intuitively multiple-point perspective, of the inner primordial being where he rediscovers himself.
Engaging to this ‘A Time to Remember (2020)’ Art series by Mohamad Khalil Amran. One can witness how the artist addresses his colors pallets in harmony, at one point an interplay between the primary, secondary, and tertiary colors of the Color Wheel as introduced by Johannes Itten, celebrated Bauhaus Swiss artist-designer. Juxtaposing the ‘Color Ratio’ by Goethe, where the artist immerses his canvas from white-black-white, articulating balance, harmony, and order, within his bright Red, Blue, and Yellow color pallet.
The work is a flirtation of colors, where the artist expression offers more than what the presented colorful hues can promise. The title says it all, but the abstraction tells much, much, more. Claude Levi-Strauss believed that ‘Binary Opposites’ form ‘All human ways of thought’, which in terms of Communication Studies, he ascribes binary pairs as essential to ‘All human signifying structures’. The artist attempt to achieve an interplay of binary opposites from the forbidden colors of Blue-Yellow, and Red-Green, as a homage to Rothko’s integrated yet spiritual color-field abstraction.
Expressive strokes encapsulates; the speed, spontaneity, and space of this captivating work series. The strokes are wide, as an effect of the cut-out mounting boards used as raw palette knife, stripped out of is primary purpose, into various shapes and size. These irregular shapes and size deliver intentional, yet unintentional strokes of horizontal, and vertical rhythms.
On some of the works, there are diagonal movement flows, which capitalized the dynamic movements, patterns, and rhythms evident through thick layers, intruding the surface of the Acid-free Paper. The amount of strokes are harmonized through Kastellow’s Form Composition Ratio of the; Dominant, Sub-dominant, and Subordinate, with aggressive strokes, and mark makings dry-on-dry, left to right, top to bottom, and vice-versa.
From a one point perspective, initially the finish work does not have; background, middles ground, nor foreground, figure, subject, shadow, light, naturalistic representation of the objective reality.
Nevertheless, abstraction fulfills the volumes from all the voids mentioned above through expressive strokes and structures, movements and materials, speed and sizes upon emphasizing focused, as well as breathing spaces, dynamic cohesion and expressive conglomeration, contrast in tension and aggression on texture, reflected on the Weight of each compositional Colors, and Strokes. Upon decoding the surface of each painting, one would witness layers, and layers of different textures, binding together a unified composition.
By time, teaching Art History and Contextual Studies, the artist was moved by the writings of Robert J. Goldwater, in the book Primitivism in Modern Art. Goldwater listed several characteristic and denominators which connects primitive with modern, one of them is ‘Simplicity’, here the artist finds his task, interpreting the Modern simplified strokes, shapes, and colors in his oeuvre. During the primitive ages, colors mostly available were black which came from charcoal, red which came from animal blood, and yellow ochre which came from earthen material such as soils. In the modern epoch, the artist discovers himself, through the modern pallets of Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, White and Black acrylic paints.
The primitive shapes celebrated simplified forms found in the ‘Golden Ratio’, and Golden Section reduced to its basic shapes such as rectangle, square, and circles. If one looks closer, in this series, there are proximity in how the artist conglomerates closure through his expressive strokes, evoking virtual lines of rectangle, square, and circles.
The primitive ages did not start on a white canvas of picture plane, rather did they explore darkness of the cave walls. Here the artist Mohamad Khalil Amran creates his black background by applying acrylic paint or Chinese ink, as the foundational base which supports the whole compositions. By applying striking colors of red, blue, and yellow on a darker background, there are evident of illusions where the colors float, within its own respective; depths, volumes, voids, and shadows of its own. Thus, we do find some sort of background, middle ground, and foreground in an abstract work of art, if we look closer.
Kandinsky through his apperception on ‘Spirituality in Modern Art’, remarks the black color as equivalent to silence, where his architectural creations were also influenced by the use of dark backgrounds. Ad Reinhart remarks Square as the supreme shape, and Black as the supreme color. In the last ten years of his life, Reinhardt focused solely on Square, Black Paintings (Black Square Series). Reinhardt’s black square somehow appears as an antithesis to Robert Rauschenberg’s white square work, entitled ‘Erase de Kooning’. where de Kooning’s white square appears as the counter rejection to Duchamp’s additive moustache on Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa named L.H.O.O.Q. Rauschenberg’s approached his work by a subtractive method of erasing de Kooning’s work, rather than Duchamp’s Additive approach. Both approach were considered Iconoclastic in disciplines of Art History itself.
Kazimir Malevich’s suprematism movement seek to free painting through his Black Squares. He remarks that “In the year 1913, trying desperately to free art from the dead weight of the Real World, I took refuge in the form of the Square”. Somehow Melevich’s simplified shapes and reduced color pallets, infused a modern spiritual iconography, which was an antithesis (Iconoclasic) to the objective reality and representation of classical Christian art iconology itself. He appears as a modern preacher desperately struggling to free art from the ballast of the objective world, by focusing only on form. He sought to create paintings that would have an emotional impact comparable to Religious works. In which by focusing on pure form and color, art could provide a direct experience on the fundamental truth of existence.
The thick and tendered brushstrokes in this ‘A Time to Remember (2020)’ Art series by Mohamad Khalil Amran captivates; thin and drippy, thick and matte finish of almost tough, and masculine strokes, which speaks the intensification of its medium as a stimuli towards one’s act of mind; to reflect, respond, and react. Modern artist objects the objective reality, by seeking spiritual or non-objective art of animal instinct, intuition, and terrains of the subconscious.
On the contrast, William de Kooning never believed that abstraction and representation were mutually exclusive. As he remarked “I’m not interested in ‘abstracting’ or taking things out or reducing painting to design, form, line, and color. I paint this way because I can keep putting more things in it – drama, anger, pain, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas about space. Through your eyes it again becomes an emotion or idea”. Thus, this statement by the artist, becomes one of the fundamental thesis which abstract art permeates a state of emotion, and expression, as well as idea which connects the surface to its surrounding. Hence, it is within this concept that the artist engages his work as a mindscape of his essence, and presence.
Salvador Dali once remarked in an interview; “Every painter paints the cosmology of himself…Raphael painted the cosmology of Raphael, Raphael is from the Renaissance period. Dali paints the Atomic Age, and the Freudian Age, Nuclear things, and Psychological Things”. Through this statements the artist worldview (cosmology) is within itself a collection Aesthetic emotion and experience. Clive Bell remarks Aesthetic emotions as the significant form derived from the primordial quality, in which although he never says so explicitly, it becomes clear that it is also a property of the work in itself.
“Lines and colors combined in a particular way” and “certain forms and relations of forms” that produce the aesthetic emotion are the features of significant form. Nevertheless, Beardsley describe Aesthetic Experience as the Clarity and Coherence in a work of Art. In where abstraction art seeks; the unity, complexity, and intensity on how the artist underplays, interplays, or overplays, his expression by tapping the spiritual, subconscious, and intuitive state.
In a nutshell, ‘A Time to Remember (2020)’ series by Mohamad Khalil Amran is the testament to the artists narrative by encoding ‘Time and Space’, as his main subject revolving towards his artistic progress, and oeuvre journey. In this series time is the speed, and space is the sensuality born from the simplified strokes, shapes, and compositional structures, interplayed through intuitive experience from the artist Praxis as an Academic-Artist.
In a sense ‘Time’ itself is the ‘Subject’ which demarcates the Space of his canvas!
Mohamad Khalil Amran was born in Batu Pahat, Johor, Malaysia. He received his Bachelor Degree in Fine Art (Majoring in Painting) from 1981-1985 at ITM Malaysia. After finishing his undergraduate studies, he ventured on art opportunities around Kuala Lumpur where he associates himself with the ‘Anak Alam’ Art Group, before he was awarded with the postgraduate ‘Young Lecturer Scheme (YLS)’ scholarship in 1986-1988. Upon finishing his Masters in Art History and Theory, at the University of Essex United Kingdom (UK), his experience and education abroad brought him as one of the Bakat Muda Sezaman (Young Contemporary Art 1989) selected minor award category by the National Art Gallery of Malaysia, which then warrants him a place as one of the Liberal Art Studies lecturer, where his forte was on Art History and Contextual Studies.
Mohamad Khalil became the Head of Program of the department of Liberal Studies for at least 15 years (Between 1990-1995, and 2000-2013), where in 2014 by support of the department, Mohamad Khalil introduced Visual Culture Studies as the Body-of-Knowledge (BOK) respectively of its own, from a servicing department in the faculty, to a program of its own in Art and Design education. Mohamad Khalil was appointed Associate Professor by UiTM in 2004, due to his efforts in establishing innovative new art subjects for postgraduate studies such as; Contextual Studies and Art Issues where artists, as well as photographer speakers such as: Yusof Ghani, Rafiee Ghani, Jalaini Abu Hassan, Tajuddin Ismail, Sharmiza Abu Hassan, Kamarulzaman Md Isa, Ahmad Shukri Elias, Ahmad Shukri Mohamed, Jamil Mat Isa, Mustapha Halabi, Andrialis Abdul Rahman, and many others, come together upon sharing their Contemporary method, practice, and experience in the Malaysian Art Scene.
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