{"id":27286,"date":"2008-07-18T11:53:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-18T11:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/?p=27286"},"modified":"2023-12-07T13:15:36","modified_gmt":"2023-12-07T13:15:36","slug":"abdul-multhalib-musa-travelling-with-moving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/artikel\/2008\/07\/abdul-multhalib-musa-travelling-with-moving\/","title":{"rendered":"Abdul Multhalib Musa: Travelling with Moving"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Stillness. Stasis. Movement. Action. Sitting in traffic on the way to Wei Ling Gallery to see Abdul Multhalib Musa’s recent solo show Twist<\/em>, I didn’t have a book, newspaper, I-pod or other useful strategy to pass the time en route. I glanced at my taxi driver who was reading an article on the aphrodisiac qualities of watermelon, which sadly, were of no interest to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore lost in thought, I contemplated the notion\nof travelling without moving which is what immediately struck me when first\nconfronted with Multhalib Musa’s work. Somehow the stillness of the cars\ntrapped on the road, the frustration of motorists impatient to arrive at their\ndestinations, the stop-start motions of the cars in contrast to the seamless\nbuzzing of traffic on the other side of the road all lent themselves\nappropriately as the starting point to the exhibition. With the geometry of the\ncity all around, I was anticipating precision, chaos, architectural lines and\norganic punctuations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I entered Wei Ling Gallery and climbed the stairs to\nthe exhibition space. The very nature of the gallery with its labyrinthine\ninternal architecture, lends itself to an interesting dialogue with the work of\nAbdul Multhalib Musa, a well established Malaysian abstract sculptor who is\nalso a trained architect. His architectural background resonates strongly in\nhis practice, which explores the possibilities of seemingly rigid metals, in\nthis case, steel and how it can be manipulated to be both precise — in his use\nof technique and repetition of form — whilst simultaneously fluid and\nrhythmic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exhibition displays two different motifs; a wall\nbased series of steel panels entitled Linear\nTwist<\/em> and free standing spiralling sculptures: the Twist<\/em> series that both take up the entire gallery space. This\nrepresents a new body of work for Multhalib Musa (that has evolved from an\nearlier series) in response to paintings by Yusof Ghani entitled\n“Biring” exhibited in 2007 at the Gallery. The action and movement\nfrom Yusof’s painting’s subject matter, the cock fight, inspired Multhalib Musa\nto create a series that echos the blurring pace of bodies in motion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a clear and precise delivery of the work,\nrealised by computer design and laser cutting. The Twist<\/em> sculptures display a mathematic sensibility which is made up\nof multi-layered blades similar in shape to those found in food blenders or\nairplane propellers consisting of either two, three of four fins. Stacked to\nform an undulating screw like totemic structure, the striations from the cut\nsteel etched into the edges of each blade display metallic greys, blues and\ngolds reflecting a myriad of colour which heightens the movement of the\nsculpture. The Twist series follows on from the artist’s earlier mobiles work\nand although made of steel and dense in form, there is a certain lightness to\nthese structures. It is easy to imagine them turning in the wind like their\nlighter spiral mobile counterparts found hanging from household porches. In\naddition there is a delicacy in design that shows a consciousness of organic\nforms such as the spiral of a sea shell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The juxtaposition of motion and stasis is clear, the Twist<\/em> sculptures display each frame of\nmovement of the whirring blades, methodically measured, the spinning\nfirecracker in slow motion as if in water. Industrial Duchampian figures both\nascending and descending the staircases in the gallery. However, unlike the\ndrama of the cockfight from Ghani’s paintings, there never seems to be a moment\nwhen this capturing of movement gets out of control, the blades are dull,\ndeliberated corroded to a specific point by the artist and then preserved to\nbecome an untouched relic. Reminiscent of Deconstructivist concerns of\nunpredictability and controlled chaos as seen in the works of architects like\nDaniel Libeskind, Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid, the work never turns into\narchitectural megalomania. The monumentality lies in the silence of these\nrelatively small sculptures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wall based work possess a different quality, one\nthat is deliberately more organic, more lyrical and sentimental. Each steel\npanel has had multiple half circles cut into them which is then lifted out of\nthe surface to create patterns similar to sunbursts or fallen leaves. Where as\nthe Twist<\/em> sculptures have an implied\nindustrial quality the Linear Twist<\/em>\nseries is meditative, with an iconic natural\/spiritual factor that give the\nwork a more implicit meaning, limiting the possibility of multiple\ninterpretation. The real strength of this body of work lies in the free\nstanding sculptures where the artist’s preoccupation with the relationship\nbetween art and architecture is much more apparent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately it was the dialogue between the gallery\nspace and Multhalib Musa’s work that create a tightly woven and effective total\ninstallation. The zig zagging of the gallery’s staircases, hexagonal flooring,\nexposed brickwork and remnants of the original internal structure create\nmovement within movement. With each floor visually accessible to one another\nthe viewer’s gaze is able to travel both upwards and downwards, as it does when\ntaking in the upward and downward spiralling motion of the sculpture or form\nbursting from the panels. Coupled with views of the city outside where the eye\nconstantly takes in the motions of a living metropolis, highways, sky scrapers,\nthe organic forms of trees and grass, industrial cranes building one structure\nafter another all echo what was happening inside the gallery. Even the whirring\nblades of the floor fans on each level seems to become part of the show\ncomplimenting the artists inspiration from the built environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reference to Yusof Ghani’s work is strangely absent in\nthe exhibition except for a few lines in the press release which questions the\nimportance of this starting point to the work. This context does not seem to be\na crucial inclusion in the construction of the exhibition. The use of painting\nas a subject to respond to would have been interesting to explore especially\nwith such tectonic work but in this case it seems to disappear from\nconsciousness completely as the sculptures and gallery architecture overwhelm\nany such concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abdul Multhalib Musa’s career is going from strength to strength. A former Rimbun Dahan artist, he has exhibited consistently in group and solo shows since 2000 and has been commissioned to create a public sculpture for this year’s upcoming Beijing Olympics. As I left the gallery, anticipation to see how this artist’s practice develops filled my thoughts as I waited to be held in traffic once again in the growing city, like Multhalib Musa\u2019s practice: travelling without moving. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

~ <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Published: 08.07.2008 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stillness. Stasis. Movement. Action. Sitting in traffic on the way to Wei Ling Gallery to see Abdul Multhalib Musa’s recent solo show Twist, I didn’t have a book, newspaper, I-pod or other useful strategy to pass the time en route. I glanced at my taxi driver who was reading an article on the aphrodisiac qualities […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7758,7776,7774,7766],"tags":[854,855,276,259,2723,3682],"language":[7785],"writer":[7860],"class_list":["post-27286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artikel","category-pameran","category-ulasan","category-seni-visual","tag-abdul-multhalib-musa","tag-rimbun-dahan","tag-sculpture","tag-visual-art","tag-wei-ling-gallery","tag-yusof-ghani","language-inggeris","writer-eva-mcgovern-ms"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27286"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38397,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27286\/revisions\/38397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27286"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=27286"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}