Finally, a show worth seeing

Most art in Kuala Lumpur these days is bad. Like, really, really really bad. Like just downright awful at some points. And most of the time, the business of art isn’t even about art. It’s about a whole lot of other extraneous things that mostly involve talking (art can’t talk to you, it can’t defend nor promote itself, only people can talk to you, defend and promote themselves). Most of the time, the business of art is about who you know, how many you know, how much you buy, whether you ask for discounts when you do buy, how often people see you at scene-related happenings and events. I just realised the other day that the only reason why I still treat a certain art world figure with some modicum of respect, even though I find them highly ingratiating and annoying, is because they know a lot of people. So I continue to tolerate their presence, even despite thinking their art is puerile garbage and their personality not much different, because having them post about our gallery on their story could bring the gallery to further eyeballs of clout.

So that’s why, when something special takes place within your lifetime, it’s like seeing a vision in the desert. Now that you’ve heard me eviscerate everything that I professionally represent, I hope you won’t think it as bias when I ask you to visit the current exhibition that’s up at The Back Room gallery (where I work as a gallery assistant), Minstrel Kuik’s “Story Time”, a collection of 23 drawings she made between 2022–23. The drawings are really wonderful, made with incredible skill and deftness, and strange and mysterious in the way De Chirico paintings or Bergman movies are. I think the least of what I’m looking for in contemporary art and culture these days - the very least - is just things that have a certain tact in how they approach their subject or medium, things that aren’t just trying to bang you over the head with their meaning or what their maker is trying to accomplish all the time. I think Minstrel’s drawing show is the first worthy thing in a long time that you can apply the idiom of “feasting your eyes on”. Most other stuff is just dog food.

Catch it now at The Back Room gallery from 2–24 September 2023. We’re open Wednesdays to Sundays from 12 to 6 pm. On the 17th of September, I’ll be moderating an artist talk with Minstrel at 3pm.