Lot 050
HAMIR SOIB @ MOHAMED
b. Johor, 1969
FROZEN, 2009
Signed and dated 'Hamir '09' 'Frozen' lower left
Mixed media on canvas
122cm x 122cm
PROVENANCE
Private collection, Singapore.
EXHIBITED
Arrival, Ernst & Young, Singapore, 2009-2010.
ESTIMATE RM 20,000 - 30,000
PRICE REALISED RM 22,000
|
The translucent image seemingly buried and preserved in ice seems to have a portent message to convey to mankind. Light tawny brown particles surround the image with the play of mottled textures and artistic drips, while the left side is an oasis of clean, transparent washes. There is mystery in the apparition, a blast from the past representing an ancestral link as Homosapiens. Is this Neanderthal-like man a victim of some environmental ice disaster, preserved in cryonics to reappear in the present as a symbolic cautionary tale? Of the Matahati members, Hamir is one who consistently loves to tread into the darker side of the ghoulish and the macabre, the Gothic-Fantastic Angst, as critic-curator Nurhanim Khairuddin labels it.
Hamir Soib is a late emergent artist from the cult Matahati artists’ co-operative partly because he was then occupied in theatres and films. His career as an artist truly took off in 2002 when he set up the art space Gudang, which signalled his greater involvement into painting. Like his Matahati founding members, he graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Art from UiTM in 1991. He won the Young Artists Incentive Award organised by Galeri Shah Alam in 2005 and was a finalist of the Sovereign Art Award, Hong Kong in 2007. He was also a non-resident artist at Malihom art residency, Penang in 2007. Outside the visual art world, he was co-Best Art Director with Zuraini Anuar in the 14th Malaysia Film Festival, for Perempuan Melayu Terakhir.
REFERENCE
In Search of the Essence of the Gothic-Fantastic Angst, Nurhanim Khairuddin, MATAHATI catalogue and exhibition, Galeri Petronas, 2008.
|