Here's the artist, Kok Yew Puah, looking back at you, albeit through the 'sunscreen' of sunglasses. It is framed by perforated film edges and a matrix of white grids which demarcate the face into little rectangles. The shades also conceal the focus of the gaze, whether it is looking at you or the surroundings, as there are no visible reflections, or just a bland vacuous look, wrapped in his own deep thoughts. Voyeur or introspective thinker, Kok Yew Puah was one who very much kept to himself, reticent and serious, and he dramatized family, friends and his children's friends to relay messages about the (ravaged) environment and the rapid urban modernisation, with his hometown Klang as a synecdoche of the wider world, or Malaysia. Puah Kok Yew, better known as Kok Yew Puah, was given a comprehensive Memorial exhibition, Kok Yew Puah: Portrait Of A Malaysian Artist, at Ilham Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, from February to April 2022. Though he had a 1973 solo at Samat Art Gallery, KL, of his large silkscreens, there were limited exposures of his works - in only two subsequent solos, Kok Yew Puah: 1985-1993, and Klang And Beyond (1997), both inspired by the British artist David Hockney. In 2004-2005, he was given an earlier tribute exhibition. In 1994, he was placed 2nd in the Malaysian Philip Morris Asean Art Awards, and was again one of the five jurors' choices the next year. He had lectured part-time on printmaking at the Mara Institute of Technology. He had his art tutelage at the Victoria College of the Arts, Melbourne, Australia, graduating in 1972 with diplomas in Painting and Printmaking. He was also one of the co-founders of the Malaysian Contemporary Watercolours Association (1994).