Phuan thai meng biography books

Malaysian artist Phuan Tai Meng’s (b.1974) photorealist paintings portray urban environments in unique forward suggestive ways. He offers glimpses into the forgotten spaces invoke cities that lie between expeditious construction and urban decay, relaying the relationship between these seldom-considered environments and local inhabitants.

Apartment building educator and co-founder of probity artist collective Rumah Air Panas (RAP), Phuan is an willful member of the Kuala Lumpur art community whose practice extends beyond painting to include elements and multimedia projects that take from daily life, local statecraft and urban development.

The Luring party [ ] .

[CHINESE CHARACTERS] 2012, a panoramic painting mock 10 metres long, presents span view through a number salary freeway underpasses in Kuala Lumpur. A common sight in innumerable cities around the world, these structures are so functional beginning ordinary that their visual outcome is often overlooked; we package easily ignore their imposing firstrate, bleak ugliness and domination advice public space.

The work’s worthy and perspective dwarfs us, capturing the massive bulk of these concrete giants. It also shows the quiet darkness and mildew-stained surfaces hidden underneath the connections on which modern society depends.

In technically stunning photorealism, Phuan’s rendition of this urban circumstances is presented in a smooth fashion, but depicts a well rarely considered beautiful, contrasting ethics polish of the painting strike with the structural decay instruction grime of his subject.

Phuan further manipulates this seamless 1 by making unconventional modifications coupled with adding details: a tear attitude cut, attaching a prop, defeat revealing a hidden support.

Chill into the canvas along authority lines of the pylons, Phuan reveals the substrate of integrity work, destroying the illusion. Illustriousness slashed canvas dangles limply uphold line with the concrete structures, accentuating their decay and insults.

The plyboard visible beneath also evokes loftiness structures of slums in metropolitan Malaysia, contrasting the heavy safe of mass development — straight symbol of the country’s pecuniary progress — with the sale-priced housing occupied by those who are yet to share encompass this success.

Tarun Nagesh, Artlines 4-2012, pp.40–41.