Taksu Kuala Lumpur is honored to present 50/50, a two-man show by Choo Kuan Yeoh and Seah Zelin. Equally different, these two young artists are also equal parts of the same shell, with paintings that share similar dynamics of form, yet disparate origins of thought.

Zelin, a graduate of the University of Central England injects a painting methodology into his works that’s based on layering. His works today have developed into more developed deconstructions of our everyday lives. Underneath the swirls and the confusion, his mise en scenes are based on images found in IKEA catalogues – those tomes where pages present perfectly-composed kitchens or living rooms, and where happy families tease you with the promise of a blissful life. . Socioeconomics, in particular, is Zelin’s subject matter du jour and globalisation has been rife in the artist’s mind.

Choo Kuan focuses on more hard-to-grasp qualities and abstraction has been adopted as his artistic mother tongue. The artist describes its concept as “something unseen and unutterable, with no incident behind it, so I feel more to the ground when I paint it out with strokes, colours, and textures, so that they go purely abstract”. Choo Kuan’s figurative-based works also circle around themes such as love, sex, and death, and there’s a European fancy in his monochromatic works, referencing a gilded era when painting was the highest form of expression.

Image: © Choo Kuan Yeoh, Taksu Kuala Lumpur