All’s Well, Ends Well / 潮繪,俗畫
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March 22th – April 13th 2013 Run Amok Gallery’s first show ‘All’s Well, Ends Well’, a duo show by Wu Ma and He En Ning. Wu Ma frequents the flea markets of George Town, where he sells his paintings, bric-a-brac and small objects of novelty. His grassroots paintings carry a sense of spontaneous naivety yet poise an unruffled confidence about his chosen subject matters. Being a self-taught artist and only by using Buncho poster colours, he constructs a mythical and fantastical allegory of imaginary world through motifs such as stallions, sceneries, spectres and daily happenings. En Ning usually works with pencil. She is also an avid collector of daily objects who totemizes each item with her own memories. By drawing reference from Hong Kong movies, she seizes scenes that she sees fit and singles out the backdrop, leaving only the characters and a few pieces of furniture. By doing this, she crystallizes the essence of the scenes yet denies direct reference and contextual meaning, allowing herself and the viewers to fill in their own. Her practice often involves intertwining the popular culture with individual nostalgia, where the former serves as time markers to her diary entries. In comparison, En Ning’s work seeks resonance through the slapstick and deadpan movie scenes amongst viewers of her generation. Her work opens up a realm for viewers where the ridicule and illogicality becomes an intrinsic part of our collective consciousness. On the other hand, Wu Ma’s works largely carry the semblance of books of virtues and mural paintings in Chinese temples. These paintings often carry moralistic values such as the concept of karma and religious precepts. Apart from these pedagogical works, he also uses painting to reminisce his childhood memories or to make social commentary. Whether to consider Wu Ma as an outsider artist or not, his idiosyncratical selection of subject matters and his familiar yet unorthodox painting style open up a new way of engaging with painting. The movie itself is used as a mean by En Ning to traverse through spatial and temporal boundaries; it also acts as a tool to select and extend her imagination, claiming these scenes as hers. Similarly, Wu Ma’s choice of portraying his characters in traditional Chinese costumes suggests an attempt to retrieve a certain archetypal period of time that is believed to be long gone. Curated by Hoo Fan Chon.                     RUN AMOK GALLERY 推出成立以來第一檔展覽「潮繪˙俗畫」，展出馬來西亞悟馬(Wu Ma)和台灣藝術家何恩寧(En Ning)二人的繪畫作品。悟馬是一位穿遊於喬治鎮跳蚤市場的擺攤者，販賣自己的手工水彩畫和小件古玩。他的畫風有著濃濃的草根味，描繪市井小民的各種私下生活情狀；他使用BUNCHO牌顏料，訴說著他的冷眼觀察，穿插在駿馬、鯉魚、亭台樓閣等類似中國山水畫的構圖裡，形成一系列奇異的鄉城俗世繪。
而何恩寧以鉛筆作畫，挑選兒時看過的港產電影作為範本，把電影情節定格，選擇性的抽離了人物、背景、情節，凸顯了一份非現實的真空狀態。這個動作有如攝影術，捕捉了她對港產電影無法描述的戀慕情結。 兩相對照，何恩寧透過電影中低俗、荒誕的鬧劇場景來換取共鳴，作為日常生活的反差，這讓擁有同樣生活經驗的觀眾通過她的作品而進入某種情境，為典型的「樣板回憶」塑造了一個出口，映射了真實生活中，人們拿著台詞來套用、說嘴的插科打諢時刻。 何恩寧是從香港無厘頭電影出發，而悟馬的作品則擁有民間信仰的痕跡。他的作品具備了善書的風格，接近於寺廟裡頭的牆繪，有著教化芸芸眾生的影響力。他透過個人的人生歷練、社會觀點和對因果論的闡述，為自己賦予了一個莫名的使命感和道德任務；悟馬是從未受過正規訓練的素人藝術家(outsider artist)，他透過有意識與無意識的每日作畫形態，定義了一個新的創作風格。 電影本身有穿梭時空的力量，而何恩寧利用此時空的延展性，盡情地為所欲為，讓看電影的方式成為私人記憶當中明明滅滅的亮點；而悟馬的創作思想，則建立了一個現實社會中不一定存在的道德典範時空，供人穿遊。 他們的作畫方式，分別喚起了不同世代的集體回憶。 |