Conflict on canvas

By MAS ZETTI ATAN

In a powerful new series, artist Yusof Ghani prompts painful thoughts of the eternal strife that dogs humanity. 

THERE is one constant in the art of leading Malaysian artist Yusof Ghani: his dedication to recording the many emotions and tensions created by the interaction between man and his environment. 

His latest collection of works, Biring, which is currently on display at the Wei-ling Gallery in Kuala Lumpur, continues this theme in a powerful fashion indeed.  

Biring III
As in most of his previous series, Yusof anchored these new paintings on a well-known cultural icon (roosters) and expanded on a seemingly common past time (cockfights) to depict the many different tensions that exist within man. 

Visualise the cockfight: two roosters battling for supremacy and, of course, for survival. Often times, the vanquished ends up in a heap on the ground, dead, blood and feathers splattered everywhere. There are cheers for the victor, and while there may be pity for the loser, such is the game of life, the onlookers shrug. The weak lose out. The strong win. These, then, are the rules of engagement. 

Enter Yusof Ghani and his superb mastery of the brush. In his hands, the canvases record the split-second actions in a cockfight – and magnify those split seconds into agonisingly long periods. Time is frozen, and we are confronted with the full spectrum of the emotion, the tension and the conflict. 

I was totally unprepared for the depth of emotions depicted by the paintings! And for my own reaction to them. 

The artist’s statement describes Biring as “the spirit that exists between imagination and reality ? capturing the intangible, making the invisible visible; turning energy into ? visual realm”. Yusof reiterated to me that his paintings are emotional expressions of his concerns about man and his environment. 

Biring XXIV
The exhibition is certainly all of this, and more. 

Two hours into my visit, I sent a phone text message to a friend wondering what emotional upheaval the artist had gone through in 2006 to have produced such a superb visual documentary of tension and conflict. 

Biring 111 greeted me at the start of the exhibition with great angst and anguish. In a flurry of movements captured in paint, it spoke of man’s anger and fear at a particularly turbulent point in life. There is contemplation of the descending darkness, fear of the unknown, while all around doom hovers, just waiting to claim its latest victim.  

It was a very disturbing personal moment, coming face to face with conflict, tension and pain so vividly depicted on the large canvas.  

The imagery of Biring 111 coupled with the violence of Biring XLIII and Biring XXXVIII so disturbed me that I had to ask if Biring XXIV, hung almost opposite Biring 111, was among the last few in the series to be completed. It had a more soothing tone, and that was important; I needed to know that there would be an end to all this anguish.  

Biring is like a diary of the history of conflict among mankind, documenting periods of aggression, battle zones of bloodied bodies. Inevitably, there are periods when reason seems to almost prevail, when there is potential for stability and calmness. 

But, always, dark clouds hang overhead; questions keep being asked, suspicions keep being voiced while, deep down, the scars of past conflicts struggle to heal and fail miserably at times. And always, the ever-present threat of total destruction, with the roosters at times seeming to turn into birds of prey in mid-flight, claws outstretched at the ready. 

Time and again in Biring, variations in this cycle of life are recorded: the struggle to survive in a “kill or be killed” situation; the tragedies that surround each victory and each loss; the heartache and pain that somehow cannot be completely obliterated from each document.  

There is, at times, hope for rationality, hovering on the viewer’s peripheral vision – one must look hard to catch a glimpse.  

These works forced me to ask myself, what is normal and orderly? 

Biring XLIII
Since the very first man appeared on this Earth, what has been normal is cycles of aggression and the hope of reason triumphing over conflict. At times, reason emerges victorious, becoming the guiding hand for peaceful coexistence – until the next round of aggression, the next round of betrayals.  

Alone in the gallery for most of the time, surrounded by Biring, I struggled with this notion: that whether he intended it or whether it is purely coincidental, this time, Yusof has not merely expressed his concern about man and his environment. He has encapsulated the state of conflict and aggression among mankind that has repeated itself with such predictable regularity over and over again throughout history. 

I can only marvel at this artist’s creative struggle. It must have been exhausting and draining to have to sustain all those negative emotions for so long in order to transfer them so superbly on to canvas. 

Just before leaving the gallery, I sent another message to my friend to say I was absolutely reluctant to leave the exhibition and that I hoped he would see this display that is at once vintage Yusof Ghani yet a departure from the Yusof Ghani I – and the rest of the art world – have been used to. What a treat!