The Star Online: Lifestyle: Arts & Fashion

Posted: 02 Jun 2013 12:42 AM PDT

Galeri Petronas unveils the best of contemporary portrait photography.

The very best portrait photography, as many behind the camera will attest, is not about recording what someone looks like, not even about how they look at their best, or under certain conditions. A great portrait photographer will strive to give the viewer access into their subject's inner self; a window on their soul.

This month, Galeri Petronas in KLCC is running an exhibition for photography enthusiasts, featuring contemporary portrait photography from winners and finalists of the 5th Kuala Lumpur International Photo Awards 2013 (KLPA 2013) competition.

The exhibition features 80 selected portraits and best entries from the competition. The KLPA 2013 competition received entries on contemporary portraiture and smartphone images captured by amateurs and professional photographers from around the world.

Project director of KLPA 2013, Steven Lee said the photos on display offer a perspective of the unique style and artistic personality of a diverse blend of photographers.

"Every portrait reflects the photographer's creativity and interpretation of an idea. It demonstrates the photographers' individuality and how their perspective on the world is distinct from those of others," said Lee.

The KLPA 2013 exhibition is also hosting the INDEPENDENT+ series, which is a platform for emerging photographers. It showcases Someone I Know/Malaysian Edition, a print exhibition curated by Shafina Sheridan, featuring portraits by 18 local photographers. Someone I Know/International Edition is a slideshow presentation by British photographer Stuart Pilkington.

KLPA 2013 is open for public viewing at Galeri Petronas, Level 3, Suria KLCC until June 23. Open on Tuesdays to Sundays (10am to 8pm); closed on Mondays. Admission is free.

Meat the painter

Posted: 01 Jun 2013 06:50 PM PDT

Painting flesh on canvas gets this up-and-coming artist in touch with his primal side.

THERE is something very visceral about seeing Sean Lean's paintings for the first time: the incredibly detailed depictions of animals, the larger-than-life scale, the deep colours and the dense textures, all melding together to create a familiarity that goes beyond just what we see on the canvas.

But that isn't really surprising, since Lean's inspiration for his pieces is something we are all intimately familiar with: flesh. And so his debut solo exhibition, Flesh: Blacks & Whites, currently showing at Wei-Ling Contemporary, is both literally and metaphorically about flesh, from how it looks to how it makes us feel.

"I've always been fascinated by human flesh, inspired to paint it," says the 32-year-old artist. "And I wanted to satisfy that urge further. The most literal way to do that was to focus on the flesh we consume. Hence why I started painting animals."

Lean has previously shown his works in various group exhibitions here, and most recently at 18@8 KUL-SIN in Singapore, an annual art exhibition organised by Wei-Ling Gallery. He counts among his influences painters like Lucien Freud, Francis Bacon and Ann Gale, admitting that he has a strong preference for the figurative style.

"I'm not too interested in painting abstracts because I see abstraction within my figurative paintings; I feel this reflects life, where I also see abstraction within the real," he explains.

He compares his compulsion to paint flesh with the primal urge to consume meat.

"I can't quite explain why I feel the urge to paint flesh; it's almost primal, that craving or urge you get to bite into a piece of meat. It's as basic a compulsion as that," he says.

That obsession with flesh is immediately apparent in Lean's paintings. In some, it is powerful and confronting, like the almost three-dimensional scales of the reptile in Black Dragon: Black Lizard to the tough interlocking muscles and sinews on the dog in Black American Bulldog: Red, Black & Blue. In others, colours and textures play to create a softness and vulnerability, such as in the infant-like skin of a piglet in White Piglet: When I Grow Up, I Want To Be An Astronaut, or the lush yet delicate feathers on a white peacock in White Peacock: A Fowl And Some Feathers.

A common aspect of all the paintings is a tendency for Lean to break up the portraits by erasing bits of the animals, thereby both drawing the eye and creating a sense of discomfort.

"I wanted to create visual tension," he explains. "If you look at the porraits, they all touch the sides of the frame and are pretty big in scale, because I wanted to create a larger than life impression. But at the same time, the missing bits give the idea of fading away."

Some of the more common themes, he shares, are vanity and drive.

These are very apparent in his painting of a solidly muscular, white bull, White Bull: We Both Know You Want Me, the first one he worked on in the collection.

"I find a very muscular bull to represent almost pure vanity, a showbull. It doesn't plough fields, and it isn't used for meat, so it is bred solely as a physical specimen," he points out.

The specific animals that he selected to paint have their own significance, with each piece serving as a glimpse into the artist. The paintings serve as an introspective measure for him, with the different animals representing a particular facet of himself.

"Why I chose an particular animal depends on what I want to say. Some, I had a view I wanted to communicate, while others, I chose something iconic to me and the deeper meanings behind it only came to me retroactively. I always feel a connection with what I'm working on, but what that is sometimes only becomes clear later."

Flesh: Blacks & Whites by Sean Lean is showing daily, 10am to 9pm, until June 20 at Wei-Ling Contemporary (G212 and 213A, Ground Floor, The Gardens Mall, Kuala Lumpur). For more information, call 03-2260 1106 / 03-2282 8323 or visit weiling-gallery.com.

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Ahad, 2 Jun 2013