Lot 047
YONG CHIEN CHIN
b. Selangor, 1952
TERRACOTTA SERIES, undated
Signed in Chinese with seal (upper right)
Ink and colour on rice paper
47cm x 60cm
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Kuala Lumpur.
ESTIMATE RM 4,000 - 7,000
PRICE REALISED RM 3,584
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Yong Chien Chin creates tranquilising paintings by employing subtle connotations of ancient Chinese philosophies and traditional cultural spirits in a manner that advances the conventional technique of Chinese ink painting by going beyond the use of ink and brush on rice paper. He aspires to depict beauty based on the concept of Yin and Yang reflecting on “life experiences to enhance the inner senses and contents of the spiritual world”.
The artist is inspired by Xi’an Dynasty terracotta warriors as a link to the Han ancestry and civilisation. The veteran artist-educationist-ceramist Yeoh Jin Leng puts Chien Chin in a nutshell, in one of Chien Chin’s early exhibitions: “Yong Chien Chin is an artist who explores the possibilities of untraditional picture-field compositional devices to hinge imagery and content using ancient Chinese writings and pictographic symbols.”
Yong Chien Chin boasts of a galaxy of Chinese-brush masters in his early years: Yang Sing Sum in Hong Kong (1982), American turned- Singaporean David Kwo (1983), Melbournebased Malaysian-born Anthony Sum, and Malaysian masters Chung Chen Sun and Wong Chin Chin. A graduate of Post-Diploma in Fine Arts from the Malaysian Institute of Art in Kuala Lumpur, he taught Art at Chen Moh Primary School, Petaling Jaya, and on batik painting at the Malayan Teacher’s Training College. His first solo exhibition was at the Art House Gallery in Kuala Lumpur in 1981, which is followed by a number of solo and group exhibitions in Malaysia, Canada, Korea and Taiwan. The series of works exhibited in his solo exhibitions titled Terracotta Warriors and Legend of The Stones in 1995 gained him much acclaim. A committee member of the Selangor and Kuala Lumpur Shui-Mo Art Society and the Malaysian Lin-Nan Art Society, Yong Chien Chin’s works are collected extensively by institutions and individual collectors locally and abroad.
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