Urban Abyss

 Last Thursday I had the chance to view a solo exhibition held by an ex-lecturer of mine, Mr Chee Meng! He appears to be an enigmatic, lost-in-his-own-world kinda lecturer on-campus, but do a Google search on him and he's actually one of the many successful traditional artists in Malaysia, with plenty of incredible artwork and experience woven into a belt :D. Urban Abyss is his second solo exhibition, featuring a combination of techniques and materials to produce large, layered artworks.

Many of us ex (and current) students came by to support him. The place was crowded with big smiles and familiar faces. It was almost like a get-together party!

Bunch of us ex-foundation students with the master artist! The only photo we managed to get with him that night!

Mr Chee Meng's artwork reminds me of Chinese nest boxes, or Matryoshka dolls because of its many many layers. One full image is overlayed by another, and yet another, until the completed work looks like a simple, one-layered painting with a fancy background. But upon closer inspection there is an entirely new world underneath the top white. Watching the process videos, I saw things I didn't notice at all when I first looked at the paintings.

Sequential Forces

He used acrylics on MDF, along with CNC laser cutting to create even more dimension. Another thing I found impressive was the shadows he added to the flat visuals, giving the illusion of depth. At first glance one would not be able to tell what was laser-cut and what was simply painted on!

The Blue Melody

Some close ups of the cuts:

My favourite piece was The Candy Machines, because the colours were so bright and cheerful! 

The Candy Machines

Mr Chee Meng's Urban Abyss exhibition will be held till the 5th of May at Wei-Ling Contemporary Gallery at the Gardens Mall, KL. You can clicky clicky here for more information on the exhibition, the other artworks, and view the step-by-step process! 

Happy Sunday everyone! What will you create today? :D