A Place Called Love: The Third Solo Exhibition by Marisa Ridzuan Ng (2017)​
Commissioned exhibition catalogue essay
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Abstract Painting is Abstract. It confronts you…
Jackson Pollock (1912-1956)
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I first met the artist Marisa Ridzuan Ng some time ago when I was working as a civil servant at the Balai Seni Lukis Negara (that’s the original name of the National Art Gallery) as one of its dozen or so curators. Marisa came out of the blue with an ambitious idea seeking the support of the gallery. After a long discussion about the viability of her project (she had planned to produce hundreds of sketches and wanted to exhibit them at the Balai), the plan fell through. A few years later, she had soldiered on to other projects and even organized two of her own solo exhibitions which brought modest attention to her work as an abstract painter. Our paths crossed last year where she was one of the invited participants in RHB Foundation’s ‘Art with A Heart: Images of Life’ exhibition held at the National Visual Arts Gallery. I was hired to advice, curate and wrote a short essay for that wonderfully successful corporate event. It was during that time that she told me she was working on a series of paintings about her grandmother Ong Chiew Bee who was in the final stages of colon cancer.
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‘There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about.’
Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011)
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Marisa is one of the few pure abstract painters in the local art scene. Contrary to popular misconception, abstract painters are a minority in Malaysia where the general public (including many art lovers) prefer representational/ realistic images as they can be easily understood when compared to the seemingly chaotic daubs, strokes and splashes of colours that do not coalesce into recognizable forms or images. As someone who is passionate about abstract art, I must point out that abstraction is not a mindless act of desecrating the surface of a canvas with paints, brushes or palette knives where layers upon layers of colours are callously applied without reason or forethought. Abstraction is a conscious, wilful act of rebellion in the visual arts to free the human spirit which had for too long been incarcerated in the body of representational art under the bondage of fossilized traditions inherited from the Renaissance. Many if not all of the best abstract artists in the past were originally trained in figurative art but found the approach limiting and unable to express the individualism, passion and the ethos of their times. The painstaking task of liberating the dots, lines, colours and shapes from its purely practical and objective functions in constructing realistic images began with the Impressionists followed by the Post Impressionists. Personal feelings, emotions and subjective ways of perceiving the world became more prominent with the Expressionist and the Cubists which finally led to pure abstraction by subsequent art groups and artists. In a sense, the figurative artists were the ‘idolaters’ and the nonfigurative artists were the iconoclasts.​
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‘Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paint what he is.’
Jackson Pollock
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When Marisa hesitantly unveils a few pieces of the current series of works to me, I was instantly captivated. The words that came to mind were ‘spontaneous’, ‘truthful’ and unusually ‘playful’. Inspired by her deep relationship with her grandmother who had raised her when she was still a child, each painting is an unpremeditated visual outpouring of how she felt. Some pieces have narratives while others are observations and recollections of tender moments between the artist (together with her 12-year-old son, Connor) and the subject. Conversations, leisure time together, an object or a gesture with emotional significance are each represented in the lines, dots and patches of colours, all purposefully in its right place. The intensity of the colours and strokes in each painting corresponds to the weight of its psychological value to the artist. The process of making the pictures came easy and she knew instinctively exactly when a picture is complete. I am reminded of a wonderful quote by Robert Henri (1865-1929) ‘The stroke which marks the path of a rocket into the sky maybe only a few inches long, but the spirit of the artist has travelled a thousand feet at the moment he made that stroke’.
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Perhaps we could approach her latest output from the view that they are the results of Psycho dynamics. According to the founder of Psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) psycho dynamics is based on the movement of psychological energy within the person, in the form of attachments, conflicts and motivations. The idea is borrowed from the concept of 19th century physics where energy can be shifted or transformed but the total amount remains the same. How we channelled this psychological energy offers insights into who we are. A person’s personality, in terms of differences in tastes, habits, attitudes and behaviour patterns are the results of the way they each displace or sublimate their energy from their early instinctual preferences. Freud discovered that memories and associations that arose from analysis with adults regularly leads back to the early years of childhood.
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‘It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child’
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
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What Picasso meant when he made the above statement was that children had not yet been seasoned with the outlooks of a particular culture or value system and domesticated by society to observe its rules of propriety. Therefore, they see the world with fresh eyes, curious, in wonderment and in awe. As adults however, our naive optimism and enthusiasm for life over the years have gradually been replaced by fear, suspicion, defensiveness and cynicism, hardened by our practical experiences from interacting with people in particular and society in general. These negative feelings and attitudes hold us back from behaving and living in spontaneous and joyful ways. They are the chief causes of our discontents, anxieties, neurosis and psychosis. For artists, to lose that childlike ability to be inspired, moved and invigorated by the world around them is a total deathblow to artistic creativity.
For years Marisa worked diligently, seeking a unique style to express her way of looking at the world that she could claim as her own. But the impending passing of someone very dear has led her to disregard all inhibitions when painting. Expressing herself in such a spontaneous, earnest and even playful way, she now paints, to quote Picasso again, ‘like a child’.
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And as they say, “Children don’t Lie”.
In truth, Marisa has nothing to fear at all for the source of her strength comes from a place of unconditional love.
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