HAMIR SOIB: INTRODUCTION After some time appreciating the “tragic pleasures” of his (recent), we notice a dark angst lurking behind his composed posture; a kind of anger that reveals and exposes the reality. Stripping anger from its escapist aspect, he saves it as a passion, a lust to enslave the aesthetics to rescue his soul. He releases anger via the fabrication of horrifying spectacles dealing with death and apocalyptic themes, whose meaningful contents express the ugly tragedies of contemporary humanity. Contrary his aggressive persona (as discernible from his aesthetics), Hamir’s entry into the Malaysian art realm goes through a rather a gradual process. Only within the last five years or so his dramatic and satirist painting imbued with social-political commentaries have caught the attention of galleries, collectors, critics and fellow artist only within the last five years or so. Being a member of MATAHATI since its inception notwithstanding, his name is not as well recognized as other members’. He never skip any of MATAHATI’s collective exhibitions, from their debut show Life (199) to Room (2002), and he took part in various other shows and competitions; yet his earlier works did not stir much interest among art lovers and were not enthusiastically reviewed by art critics. During those early years, he was in fact too involved in other visual arts that he found no time to focus on his fine art making. Like Bayu, Masnoor and Fuad, he produced scenic paintings and designed sets for theatres and films. I am not sure when exactly the art public started to acknowledge Hamir’s significant talent. Some say since Tak Ada Beza installation in 2002; other think since his relief mixed-media Tidur won Shah Alam Gallery’s Young Artist Incentive Award in 2005. However, the founding of Gudang in 2003 momentously marked Hamir’s (re)entry into the art scene. In addition to it being his personal studio and workshop, Gudang also functions as an alternative space that provides multi-media showcases, residency programmes for young graduates and foreign artists, and funding for indie filmmaking. From 2000 to 2004, there are seems to have been a lull in his art activities. Only from 2005 onwards do we notice his renewed interest in joining art shows. Besides participating in MATAHATI’s Mager collaborative project with the philippines’ Anting-Anting group, he also involved in YKP’s Takung and Lost Generation’s Notthatbalai festival among others. His efforts culminated in his first solo exhibition titled Pameran Tunggal at Gudang. I tend to regard it as the marking transition in Hamir’s career. For the first time I his nearly 15-year career, the public had the privilege of observing in close proximity a collection of his paintings previously enjoyed only by an exclusive group of people. The subsequent solo exhibition Imbasan in 2007, which included some works he executed during his brief ABN-AMRO stint at Malihom studio in Penang, couple with his piece A Very Thin Line reaching the top 30finalists in Sovereign Asian Art Prize in Hong Kong, only confirmed his rank as one of Malaysia’s most “branded” contemporary painters. JAWI AND PIG AS VEHICLES OF HALAL-HARAM POLITICS OF ART In the late nineties, many Malay art exponents still advocated Malay-Islamic revivalist tendencies in the wake of the National Cultural Congress in 1971 and Akar-Akar Pribumi (The Roots of the Native) Seminar in 1979. They forbade the use of figures and limited the imagery to Arabic-Jawi calligraphy and arabesque-floral ornamentation. Partly influenced, party disturbed by their creative impulses, Hamir exhibited the multi-compositional Jawi series during MATAHATI’s PL show (1999). In one installation he stacked up several silk screen blocks exposed with Jawi alphabets and scrawled on the encircling floor Jawi texts such as “ini cuma tulisan Jawi” (“this is only Jawi writing”). On a huge teluk Belanga tunic (Jawi III) he stenciled “saya boleh baca” (“I can read”), also in Jawi. By employing the script as the significant from of this series, while no doubt wanting to address the alienation of Jawi writing in the (Malay) society, he also at the same time contests its aesthetic idealism and its alleges sacredness. It somewhat reminds us of Redza Piyadasa’s Bentuk Malaysia Tulen (1980), in which he stencilled in Jawi on yhe upper zone of the overtly political pisture “apakah ini satu bentuk Malaysia yang tulen?” (“is it authentic Malaysian form?”). Is Arabic-Jawi script the only “original”, “halal” form that should construct the identity of Malaysian art? Hamir, by installing his Jawi series in a secular context, especially in scribbling Jawi “graffiti” on the floor, wrestles its cultural values from the domain of “holy” discourses and altogether “blasphemously” nullifies its religious undertones. During MATAHATI’s exhibition Room in 2002, he installed a painting of six pigs, the most “haram” animals, and on the floor in front he placed a miniature writing human figure evidently trying to grapple a piece of metaphorical umbilical cord stretching towards a toilet nearby. At the end of the chord, a papier-mache sculpture of a stillborn baby was deposited in the toilet bowl. The serene ambience projected by the pig family portrait appeared to be incongruous with the wicked in humanity taking place on the floor and in the washroom. The contrasting impression presented an allegory concerning mankind’s moral decay in comparison to the animal sense of family bonding. Hamir’s clever application of the beauty of pigs in composing a pictorial sermon moreover was motivated by his desire to subvert the politics of Malay-Islamic art and its pious adherence to a non-figurative, “halal” iconography. In content and form, Tak Ada Beza perhaps marks his stylistic transition from Abstract Expressionism to Fantastic Realism. MAGICAL-FANTASTIC REALISM AS A VEHICLE OF SOCIAL-POLITICAL CRITIQUE In Pilihan, a strangely disturbing scene, perhaps inspired among other things by the Greek legend of Glaukos the son of Sisyphos and his flesh-eating horses, opens up to the viewer: two demented horses whinnying with fear in the midst of a volcanic eruption (on the right plane) and the man with blank stares helplessly trying to free himself and his boat from the entangling tree roots (on the bottom plane). The chaotic impression of an existential dread is made more fantastic by the imposing presence of thick clouds, the forceful swirling of volcanic smokes and the mighty roar of raging seas. Its atmospheric allegory of human puniness by means of the symbolism of natural power and classical mythology terror, mystery and despair. The demension and tone of this painting are reminiscent of Hamir’s theatrical backdrops. Dan Master Itu Sedang Bekerja… celebrates the burlesque aspect of gothic fantasy. Set against the background of classical architectural setting and occupying the stage to the left, the “master” hypnotises his small crowd with his usual pseudo-intellectual tirades. An impression of chaos, formed by the dramatic vortex of the black cyclone sucking out the book from his hand, holds one key symbolical element of this picture. The jester-like facial make-up (mask) worn by the master is the principal embodiment of human masquerade depicted here. Its white face and red lips stand out vividly among the gloomy landscape. As in Ancient Greek theatres, Hamir uses the mask to replace the master’s individuality with a persona; only his voice represents his identity, his existence. His cynical smiles and his detachment from the crowd constitute the nucleus of the scene. As he lives in a grotesque world, the master conceals his abyssal secret depths behind the mask, fabricating innumerable social, emotional, stylistic imitations. Panoramas of horror and chaos in Berdialog Dengan Tiang Seri and Membuang Tiang Seri increase the ghoulishness of both pictures. To anchor their compositions and significations, Hamir utilises the pillar as his personal symbol of absolute hegemony. The defacement of the ghostly, anaesthetized figures sunk in their own reveries in Berdialog Dengan Tiang Seri conjures the image of some primal terror of the state of “unfreedom”. Their incomprehensible nature is made worst by the presence of a sinister “raksasa” creature, which looms over their grieving bodies kneeling silently, their heads bowed down in fear, surrounding to the beast and the pillar. As the atmosphere is veiled by an opaque monochromatic colouring, the painting looks so eerie that the emptiness and silence grow into an unspeakable uncertainty, the scene changed with an unbearable tension. If the harrowing vision in Berdialog Dengan Tiang Seri is additionally underlined by the ambiguous emptiness and stillness, in Membuang Tiang Seri on the contrary it is signaled by the riotous movement of people. The painting portrays an intense scene of power struggle between those aligned to the “pillar” and those who oppose it. The deeper fascination triggered by this picture derives on one hand from its tension-laden atmosphere pivoted around the majestic pillar, and on the other hand its vivid depiction of the terror of mob rules. Air Yang Sangat Dalam and Sepat oh Sepat allude to Hamir’s concern with environmental dystopia. Air… portrays three significant image against a view of a barren, frightful aquatic landscape punctuated by rows of underwater tree-stumps. In the foreground, a diabolical drama of big fish eating small fish, which in turn is on the verge of swallowing the fishhook; in the middle an ugly-looking, perhaps mutant fish; at the far right a human figure in an ancient diving suit. Inspired by his visit to Tasik Banding, this piece depicts the brutalizing effects of industrialisation that disrupt nature’s ecosystem. From another perspective, the foreground drama is an allegory of men inhumanity towards other man in tandem with Darwinian evolutionist protocol. Hamir’s “sepat” is just such a lonely portrait of a perch fish with its fantastically rough skin and deformed head, reflecting not only the impending extinction of its species but also the natural catastrophe brought about by mankind’s greed. A peculiar sorrowful mood immediately envelops us once we comprehend the fish’s sense of fear of the destruction of its ecological utopia. Hamir’s magical-fantastic works, stimulated by his observation and dream of human and natural tragedies, provide good instances of a fascinating pattern of inchoate dread. In them we recognize his passionate urge to highlight human suffering, an impulse that fires his mind and heart. Via these gothic pictorial he conveys his sense of sorrow for man’s inhuman treatment of man and nature, and the cruel waste of beauty and sensitivity implicit in the decay of the nature and humanity. Yet some realities of his imagination are sometimes so terrifying that he avoids presenting them in straightforward, realistic representations. He conceals these “black” realities within the labyrinthine planes of his “dark” canvases. MONOCHROMATIC DARKNESS AS A VEHICLE OF GOTHIC AESTHETICS The strength of Hamir’s art is essentially based on line, shading and chiaroscuro and not much on colour. The gothic characteristic in his recent paintings, however, is partly attributed to his employment of low-keyed, relatively monochromatic colouring. Although in a few paintings he uses such colours as red, blue, green and yellow, his palette ii rather restricted, not bright and loud. In Imbasan particularly, he works exclusively in terms of rusted-brown, black, grey and white to fit their grave, melancholy and terrible subjects. Mark-making in bitumen, charcoal, oil or acrylics in a limited colour range and tonality plays a crucial role in evoking the phantasmagorical mood in the majority of his works. By way of staining, thinning, washing and erasing his media, Hamir creates faint images and dreamy landscapes. Hallucinatory scenes further imply the seductive impression of surrealistic panorama. He, moreover, applies tonal gradations to suggest light, depth and distance. Allowing more forceful contrast and thus permitting ambivalent form to emerge out of a background of darkness and gloom, the process helps to induce the mysterious atmosphere that his fantastic pictorialism wants to highlight. There is a general affinity between Hamir’s interplay of dark and light and Goya’s in his Black Paintings. Both employ black, white, brown and grey to relate with death, rage and apocalypse. However in Hamir’s case, the dark-light interplay is additionally meant to create blind spots. At a glance, one could discern any form or action, as there is no source of stimuli. But when he looks long enough, the plain-looking blind spots alive with all soats of images. Hamir’s understanding of light as the source o artistic perception is discernible in his optical illusionist compositions like The Counsellor and Hitam, works that illustrate his developing technique. Working in single colours, particularly from the cold and dark spectrum and to fill up the vast expanse of background, he adopts a new visual to disguise his forms and more importantly to deceive the audience’s sense of sight. He controls his brushstrokes to produce overlapping thick impasto swirls of single colour in different shades in such a manner as to build up various tonal, intensity and textural effects. He makes the marks follow the form’ contours and main bodies, so that not only the tone colour give evidence to shape an space, but also the actual paint texture. Due to vague boundaries between them, the forms merge into the grounds tinted in similar colour. From afar, the whole surfaces of these canvases (or the zones specifically masked via monochromatic colouring) insist upon being viewed as flat and monotonous compositions, though unlike Yves Klein’s “monochrome adventure”. One needs to scrutinize closely, preferably under appropriate lighting and from suitable angles to make hidden objects appear. In Gajah Depan Mata Tak Nampak… for instance, a piece he did to protest the purchase of Botero’s work by MAS, the first image that pops up is the small red lobster in the centre that look as if trying to escape from a swirling black hole. When scanned from a particular distance with adequate light, an impression of an elephant’s face is seen filling up the entire black background. Similary the flat, white sky in The Angle of Darkness is actually occupied by a white angelic figure. In Beli Frem Percuma Lukisan, an illusion of baroque frame is shape by using very thick dark brown impasto to achieve layered, pseudo-three-dimensional textural effects. On a closer inspection, the encrusted paint result in a virtual bas-relief that makes us perceive as if the frame is carved on the canvas surface. CONCLUSION Most of Hamir’s recent paintings, fashioned either in expressionist or fantastic realist veins, include vibrant intensity of tragic subject matters. They are made even more intense by the raw, exposed quality of his images. And to balance that intensity there is a rather barbarous monotony that enhances their gothic nuances though limits their appeal. Woven with a cyclical sense of time, mythical testament, apocalyptic warnings and at times carnival grotesque, they attest to many aspects of postmodern conditions. There are furious rhythms, terrifying but powerful, that pulse throughout his paintings and makes them restless and thus difficult to resolve our mood. Within the last 19 years of his involvement in the Malaysian art scene, either individually or collectively with the MATAHATI group, Hamir has developed tremendously in many facets of the aesthetics. From his Abstract Expressionist nascent phase in the nineties, he has moved confidently to embrace different approaches in art making, experimenting with diverse techniques and visual logic: theatrical scenic painting, conceptual installation, Fantastic Realism, monochromatic painting and so on. As he has produced numerous outstanding works hitherto, his future scheme to explore the medium of film will definitely generate equally significant, if not better works of art.
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