“Sesumpah” means “chameleon” in Malay, but in Se{SUMPAH}, a group exhibition which recently had a run at the Black Box MAPKL in Publika Mall, Kuala Lumpur, an emphasis was placed on the word “sumpah”, which on its own is a Malay expression for an oath of truth.
The “sumpah” within the “sesumpah”, or how truth camouflages itself within our everyday reality, was the thematic bent of the exhibition. Organised by Fergana Art and curated by founder Jaafar Ismail, Se{SUMPAH} featured a vibrant line-up of 16 artists, but was ultimately bogged down by unimaginative curation.
The exhibition opened with paintings by emerging talent Syafiq Mohd Nor of abandoned auto vehicles rusting quietly amidst green foliage. Nature recovers and reigns supreme, decay and death are the peaceful constants of life. In this sense, the idea of shapeshifting can be read as the absorption of man back into nature.
This thread is picked up later, in a series of circular paintings by Leon Leong, titled “Aisyalam: The Tree Nation”, featuring human figures contorted like the gnarled branches of trees, reminiscent of a milder version of something from horror mangaka Junji Ito. Then, there were the squishy, meaty paintings of Azam Aris, which gave you a sense of being deep within a creature’s bowels – red, pink, brown and bumpy. The intestinal folds and curves of his brushstrokes are like the tuberous plants encircling the abandoned automobiles in Syafiq’s paintings or the fat knots of Leong’s figures. These are paintings with dark and brooding atmospheres, but within the space and bright yellow lights of the Black Box gallery – spotlights that are more appropriate for theatre than an art exhibition – they felt small, their impact blunted and stripped of depth under the harsh artificial glow of the lights.