CURIO AND CURIOSER
By Rachel Jenagaratnam
A-N-E-H
spells a quartet of artworks in Curio.
It means ‘strange’ or ‘odd’ in Malaysian, and with each letter colourfully
sculpted in glitter, these latest works by Rajinder Singh seem to cheer on and
celebrate oddities and curiosities.
Or,
are they part of a larger agency of satire? Because elsewhere, artworks bear
newspaper clippings that warn citizens of cannibalistic tendencies, a giant
cheongsam-clad figure towers Godzilla-like over buildings, and, there is a
historical and medical description of the three-headed Malayan oddity. In some,
it’s even suggested you witness ‘A MUST SEE’, ‘natives drinking teh tharike’.[1]
The
words ‘Freak Show’ (sometimes seen backwards or incomplete) give us a clue into
these fifteen artworks that make up Curio,
Rajinder’s body of work that encapsulates his observations of his own country
via the foreign media.[2]
The
artist has linked his observations to the North American and European tradition
of freak shows (highly popular in the nineteenth century) and adopted local
symbols as the protagonists in his tale.
The
text and images – the theme even - in Rajinder’s works may hint at a
qualitative and simple observation, but this isn’t the case. The contents of Curio are far more complex; the shiny
veneer, the visual vocabulary of pop art, and the glittery effects belie a
serious and concerted effort on the artist’s part to grapple topics like
peculiar histories, dichotomies, mark-making, and the excavation of texts
vis-à-vis French deconstructivist, Jacques Derrida.
I
The
arguments that support Rajinder’s works are as beguiling as his images.
There
are several to consider. The first - one the artist has been dealing with for a
long time - is how to resolve his two chief loves, mathematics and art. The
former has been a presiding influence in the artist’s creative sphere and those
familiar with Rajinder’s oeuvre and background will notice its presence from
his earliest series to Number-Trance-Face,
his preceding body of work.[3]
For
one, Rajinder’s unique attempt to couple mathematics and art is not foreign to
me. I had the pleasure of viewing Rajinder’s abovementioned series a couple of
years ago; as a younger writer I was assigned to review his exhibition for a
local English daily and what attracted me most to his works was the injection
of this very personal facet (the artist is a trained mathematician) into his
paintings.
Numbers
and mathematical formulae featured in compositions and supported layers of
paint that in turn channeled lines, forms, and eventually, the faces that were
the main subjects.
His
modus operandi for painting was calculative and methodological, and yet, there
was a subtle beauty in his artworks that was at odds with the logic and
preciseness found in science. My own deduction - or calculation so to speak -
was that the artist had found the perfect spot to battle out his inner
mathematician and the expressive artist within him, a canvas.[4]
This
discrepancy between the two disciplines still preoccupies the artist. The
visual language in his examination of the topic, however, has changed
dramatically; it is no longer a literal examination of mathematics and art, but
a more thought-out and ambiguous one.
Numbers
are scantly to be seen and it is text that now takes its place alongside a
motley crew of characters.[5] But,
like the mathematical formulae and calculations the artist once did by hand,
these have been methodically fashioned from scratch; posters, fictional
documents, newspaper reports, guidebooks, and calendars were diligently
conceptualized and created himself.[6]
This
change is certain to throw off audiences. Simultaneously, however, the artist’s
shift into more iconographic details allows for more open-ended interpretations
and a number of narratives to occur.
Take
Sensational K.K. for example. The
centre of the artwork is dominated by a banner whose letters appear backwards,
though it unmistakably reads ‘FREAK SHOW’; a woman smiles not knowing she has
been billed as a ‘NATIVE’ and therefore subjected as a spectacle; ‘M.O.L.C.
invites you to play with the amazing Malay boy’; ‘palm trees’ are mentioned, as
are ‘backwaters’; and newspaper reports are pasted in Tamil, Chinese, and
English. Multiple entry points for analysis abound, but where do we even begin
to start?
This
inundation of information and symbols is intentional says the artist. When
speaking about Curio, he states: “As
with most of my installations, they are interventions with walls, floors and
ceilings of gallery spaces, exploring themes such as degeneration, layers, and
trauma while problematising the very idea of art.”[7]
Rajinder
claims to be constantly seeking to reconcile the gap between his two disparate
practices. With Curio, he’s arguably
brought that gap closer. Artworks are more abstract this time, there is frenzy
in his works not seen before (like someone trying desperately to solve a
difficult puzzle or calculation), and the steady progression in the artist’s
oeuvre reads very much like a fine mathematical sequence.
II
If
we had to think of Rajinder’s journey towards completing Curio as a series of stopovers, then his stint in France would
certainly count as one. A pinnacle one too, counting as the second topic
informing this body of work.
In
September 2008, Rajinder was invited to work at the iDEM studio in Paris to
produce three prints for a French collector. Formerly known as the Mourlot
studios (Imprimerie Mourlot), the legendary print studio offered the artist the
perfect context to rediscover the apparatuses required to make art, and, the
aesthetics to inform it.
Rajinder
took like a fish to water in his new environment; “it was one of those
experiences that left a lasting impression”.[8] The
artist learnt to spend time working and creating the instruments and tools that
would eventually deliver paint onto his canvases; “I became a prolific litho,
linoleum, woodcut, and even stone printmaker. I started making my own stencils
and developed a style around these mark-making instruments,” he says.[9]
“It
was amazing to think that I was working in the same areas, walking the same
paths as people like Picasso, Braque, and Miro in Paris.”[10]
Amazing
indeed. Significant too, considering the direction Rajinder has been heading in
himself. Picasso and his compatriots have come to be lauded as key figures in
Modernism. Their penchant for experimentation has been celebrated, and like
these artists who looked to bring something new to the plate, Rajinder has
consciously been working in that direction with Curio.[11]
His
technique, for one, has evolved significantly. “How far do you want to push
it?” is a self-preached mantra and – especially after iDEM - the artist has
been preoccupied with the fundamental act of painting and mark-making.[12]
Canvases
for Curio are meant to mimic the look
of weathered surfaces and to appear like walls that have been transported from
old towns in Malaya. Ipoh, Tapah, Malacca are all there and the walls do not
contain traditional posters or advertisements for products, but sell living
attractions instead.
The
sense of decay, usually caused by the passing of time, has been replicated with
water jets. This method is relayed in the artist’s own words, and in true
mathematical form, in a highly structured way:
Process is key. This is what I do when I
paint:
1. I paint up to 6 to 8 layers of paint on
polyester cloth…letting each layer dry before painting the next…finishing with
a layer or two of white acrylic.
2. I prepare my screens. These are large
screens and are expensive. All artwork is done using existing sketches or
photographs or misc found and scanned material and painted and finished in
photoshop.
3. The layered polyester cloth is then
machine screen-printed (same way movie
posters are silkscreened).
4. I then start washing paint off using
water jets. I do this over a period of a week - adding and taking off paint.
5. I
spend several weeks with each painting, painting on it, or weathering it even
further using bitumen etc. The painting
changes drastically from its original image. Some pieces take up to a few weeks
to get this right – I add and take off.
6. I finally finish with glitter and
varnish.[13]
III
What
the hell is the M.O.L.C.?[14]
The
letters are seen across Curio and
little is revealed of its true identity. What do the letters means? Are they initials
or an acronym? A person or a thing?
Rajinder
states it is a super-secret organisation. Like the intricate fantasies of a
young child, the artist has devised secret handshakes, passwords, and gone as
far as creating manuals for M.O.L.C.’s members.[15]
He’s
made a facebook page too. At time of writing, 219 people ‘like’ it and the wall
features photographs of stickers of the benign Sikh figure from Let The Carnival Begin pasted on
lampposts, barbed wire, and even cars around Kuala Lumpur. Denizens of the
Internet guess its origin, suggest what M.O.L.C. stands for, and ask where they
can procure the stickers for themselves.
If
the artist has sought to go beyond the canvas, well, he’s succeeded in going even
further; Curio has gone beyond the
gallery and into the World Wide Web. It’s all very empirical, but then again,
there is a mathematician behind this artist.
Now,
what the hell is the M.O.L.C.?
It’s
the central core informing the fifteen canvases in Curio. It’s the umbrella body that endorses the freaks and rarities
in the canvases and it borrows its character from the likes of P.T. Barnum’s
Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome and the popular
freak shows of yore.
The
artist envisioned his own freak show (even specifically locating it in Missouri,
U.S.A.) based on how the foreign media were portraying Malaysia. And, seeds to
this theme can be found in a chance encounter the artist had with an 1852
American poster for a freak show that featured a bearded lady and a group of
Australians.
The
latter were featured in freak shows of the nineteenth century.[16] Their
‘otherness’ singled them out and put them in the same category as those with
physical deformities. Their accents and features served as amusement, and their
distant origins, a valid reason for them to be subjected as curiosities.
It’s
along this trajectory that Rajinder conceptualized Curio and he’s used satire and irony as tools to address the wider
problem of news reporting today. He’s amazed at how his own country is being
represented in foreign press and the visual clues present in his paintings are
hints as to how.
IV
Rajinder’s
use of the freak show as the binding theme for his observations boils down to
the notion of ‘Otherness’. And it is this very difference (cultural, racial, or
religious) that sometimes clouds judgment over what’s real and not or what’s
right and wrong.
How
do we get to the truth? Excavate, says the artist. He’s adopted the arguments
of Jacques Derrida stating everything can be read as a text (or a series of
codes), but to get closer to the heart of the matter, it’s necessary to unravel
and deconstruct.
This
is valid justification for the many layers – the décollage specifically - in
Rajinder’s works. The flatness of the surfaces of Raj’s fifteen canvases
disguise the complexity of what’s beneath. It’s a suitable metaphor for the
multiple arguments that support Curio,
and to learn about each one, you need to unmask and peel off each layer
yourself.
If
you are inquisitive enough, you will find what’s perhaps the most interesting
facet about Curio at the very base:
the artist himself.
When
queried, Rajinder denies self-identity as being an important part of his
overall research, although he does admit it is an inescapable fact.[17] It’s
there in his admission of being a transnational and of playing the role of an
observer of his own country from different places; he notes his status in his
adopted home, Singapore, as a Non-Resident Indian; he remembers times in the UK
spent with Pakistanis who saw him as one of their own countrymen (“Come to
think of it, I’ve never even been to Pakistan”); and it’s there in the fact he
is always proud to introduce himself as a Malaysian.[18]
He
has been doing so for three decades now.
V
In
Curio, Rajinder has coupled his two
chief loves again, utilized experiences gained abroad, and in his fifteen new
artworks, presented a veritable site for you to excavate and dig.
There
is only one threat in Curio and it is
that Rajinder may be leaving the title ‘mathematician’ behind and taking the one
of ‘storyteller’ instead; he’s weaved symbols and text with the fluidity of a
narrator, and like a showman in a traveling freak show, is coaxing you to come
take a closer look. If you hang around a little longer, you may even get a peek
at the artist himself. [19]
[1]
‘Teh tarike’, or ‘teh tarik’ as it is actually spelled, is a popular milk tea
drunk in Malaysia. It is unique for its frothy top caused by the “pulling” of
tea at a distance and from one cup to another.
[2]
The artist has lived in the UK and Singapore for three decades and counting.
[3]
Rajinder is a trained mathematician.
[4]
It was PVC that the artist used as his canvas then and a choice Rajinder has
stuck to for Curio. It is durable,
rigid, and resists the heavy manipulation in the production stages.
[5]
I’ve intentionally used the term ‘motley crew’ to refer to the colourful
characters that made up freak shows in Britain and America; bearded ladies,
giants, dwarves, and Hairy Mary from Borneo (a monkey passed off as human) were
all living attractions that featured in these shows. See http://www.nfa.dept.shef.ac.uk/history/shows/freaks.html
for a brief overview.
[6]
The artist originally intended these fictional documents for an installation
project.
[8]
Conversation with the artist, 10 May 2010.
[9]
Email correspondence with the artist, 7 May 2010.
[10]
Email correspondence with the artist, 7 May 2010.
[11]
“For my installations as well as my new paintings, I am pushing the bounds of
traditional painting practice”. Email correspondence with the artist, 8 May
2010.
[13]
Email correspondence with the artist, 8 May 2010.
[14]
This is the title of the facebook page that accompanies Curio. It can be viewed at http://www.facebook.com/pages/What-the-hell-is-MOLC-/111860812166443
[15]
These documents were meant to go into an ambitious installation project, but as
fate would have it, have ended up being immortalized on canvas instead.
[16] Wild
men of Borneo, wild Australian children, man-eating fiji mermaids, and the 602
lb (273 kg) woman were exhibited at the first World's Fair in Philadelphia in
1876. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freak_show
[17]
Conversation with the artist, 10 May 2010.
[19] “The
showman was an essential component and it was the relationship between the
presenter and the exhibit that produced the freak show. The exhibit of course,
could not be seen before a show and therefore needed the showman to market
their particular attractions to the curiosity seeking public.” From http://www.nfa.dept.shef.ac.uk/history/shows/freaks.html.