In
Gentle Reminders, Izat Arif appropriates the style of typical road signs to present pithy advice for younger artists of the obstructions they’ll face in the art world. Airbrushed with automotive paint and lacquer, the paintings have a slick, striking look against the white walls of the newly relocated Richard Koh Fine Art gallery in Kuala Lumpur. The messages have a biting wit, but the exhibition is truly an “art world” exhibition, in the sense that it essentially consists of inside jokes that perhaps only someone with many years of experience within the art scene would understand.
The works satirise the various tiny sins and hypocrisies that Izat has observed among artists and other art-world figures around him, by distilling them into a few ironic epigrams. There’s no one consistent style for the advice given by the warning signs; some are written like straightforward warnings, while others are written more like advice, or haughty musings.
Mostly, the exhibition punches up. With the works “If You Ever Feel Lonely” and “Learn To F*** Off” (the artwork titles can only be found in the
online catalogue), Izat criticises those artists who make a name for themselves by pandering to collectors and their preferences, effectively sacrificing their vision and artistic independence to become an artist-for-hire. At the same time, he recognises the brutal disillusionment that crushes all young artists as they realise their parents had been right after all, and that there really isn’t a future in the arts. “Maybe you can get a day job at a gallery to pay your bills,” he drily advises in one work.