TMS ART GALLERY

cordially invites you to the opening of

A Solo Exhibition by JOACHIM BLANK

Opening reception on 3rd March 2011, 11am by

Head of Director of National Art Gallery Malaysia

Yang Berbahagia Datuk Yusof Ahmad

Joachim Blank is an Internationally recognised Batik artist from Germany

Click here to learn more about the exhibition program

http://tmsart.com.my/2011/02/19/invitation-a-solo-exhibition-of-joachim-blank/

RSVP by 1st March 2011, 3pm

Call Miss Linda at 03-41075154 / 014-934 0411 email to manager@tmsart.com.my

gallery business hours: Mon-Fri 9am-6pm. (Sat, Sun & Public holiday by appointment only)

Program on the opening

10:45am Arrival Of Guests and members of the Media

11:10am Arrival Of VIP, Y.Bhg Datuk Yusof Ahmad, Head of Director Of National Art Gallery

11:15 Emcee’s Welcoming Remarks

11:20am Welcome Remarks by Miss Emilia Tan, Director of TMS Art Gallery

11:25am Speech and Launch of the Exhibition by

Y.Bhg Datuk Yusof Ahmad, Head of Director Of National Art Gallery

11:45am Gallery tour

Refreshment

1.00pm Programmed End

“One may be talented, but you need true passion, dedication and perseverance to be successful. My drive to paint is still burning strong. As my art gets more refined, I become more and more inspired by my technique,” he says at his home gallery in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur.

Sam, 65, is referring to dyetik, a technique that produces fine details not commonly seen in traditional batik works – which have cracked lines, fragmented colour planes and defined, stark outlines.

Dyetik involves placing little dots on the material to form the desired image, à la Pointillism (a technique developed by Georges Seurat in the late 19th century). The result is a uniform mottled surface glow that Sam effortlessly tweaks to incorporate depth and dimension to his paintings. Unlike traditional batik techniques, he uses relatively less wax and more dye in his works.

Sam Karuna working on a painting.

“I chanced upon this technique in 1980 while experimenting with several others. I knew this was what would set me apart from the other artists,” says Sam, who has been using dyetik in his works ever since.

The Perak-born artist started out with watercolour and oil in the 1960s before exploring the world of batik art. After his last solo exhibition in Malaysia in the early 1970s, he spread his wings and held shows abroad, including in Australia, Thailand and Singapore.

Sam is inspired by the work of other batik artists, like Ibrahim Khalid, Lim Khoon Hock, Tay Mo Leong and the late Chua Thean Teng,

He has spent 17 years teaching and training artists and batik enthusiasts, but jealously guards the workings of his self-created dyetik.

“I have never taught the technique to anyone. I’ve been told to patent it but I think it’s not necessary because it is not that easy to reproduce. It’s also time-consuming and requires lots of patience.”

A painting can easily take up to four months to complete. What’s more, he rips about one out of every six of his paintings to shreds and chucks them out the window.

“I never paint just for the sake of painting. Sometimes the subject you are working on just dies and you don’t have the burning inspiration to finish it. When a painting isn’t working out the way I want, I simply discard it and start something new.”

He is not worried about losing the desire to paint because there is really no end to the possibilities of this technique and likens working on a painting to scaling a mountain.

Sam’s dyetik painting, Unity

“I only work on one painting at a time. It’s like climbing a hill – you know what you’re doing and you have a specific goal. And you won’t stop until you’ve reached your goal.”

His next exhibition, The Dream that Never Dies, is just another stepping stone to taking this medium to new heights.

“My next stop will probably be Moscow, and I also plan to hold exhibitions in India, China and the Middle East. I want to explore places that not many people have been to,” he says.

■ ‘The Dream that Never Dies’ is open to the public on Oct 30, 11am-4pm, at the Russian Cultural Centre, 205, Lorong Ampang 2, KL (03-2144 4001). Admission by invitation on Oct 31. Twenty per cent of the sales proceeds from the exhibition will go to BAKTI.

Cha, Tano, Emilia & Wairah

Tano Batik art is inspired by his stay in Jogjakarta indonesia

Tano Batik is very much playing with the color combination

Tano & Emilia

TANO (b. 1978) is an Indonesian-based Greek artist who resides in Yogyakarta and Greece after completing his scholarship on Batik at Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta. He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts and has been practicing on various mediums including graffiti since then. His first solo was Concepts and Reality – Beyond Skepticism in 2009.

“I wanted to see if what I suspected could be done with batik. Now I know that this technique, better yet, this tradition has amazing possibilities. And I am surprised to realise that until now, it has been very little explored comparing to what I think an artist can actually do with it.”

a solo exhibition by Greek artist TANO. In this show, TANO incorporates various traditional techniques to materialise his visions and thoughts, such as Batik from Southeast Asia and charcoal drawings from the European tradition. He will also exhibit an artwork crafted according to the Byzantine icon painting. This is meant to help the viewers to approach the subject of the exhibition through the spectrum of different traditions of artistic creation.

This exhibition aims to take the viewer into an artistic journey beyond the limits of the human senses. The artworks present a lifelong commitment by the artist to explore the “unseen worlds”. The parallel dimensions that exist beyond the reality that our senses create.

Some ideas for batik practitioners to keep batik alive. It is our hope to see amateurs and professional artists from various backgrounds practise their social responsibility to develop their local communities, capitalizing on the learned values of tolerance, peaceful co-existence, and social cohesion through artistic expression and teamwork.

The strategies are as follows:

• Become an umbrella for artists through facilitating camps, forums, seminars, and meetings to help artists realize the value of their talents and encourage usage of their talents, and also to motivate the public to understand the real value of arts and media.
• Facilitate art workshops for talented people to learn how to create batik in a creative manner.
• Prepare and arrange two libraries (physical and electronic) to be available for the artists.
• Facilitate Art Reach trips to different countries, where arts play a role in community development and building different kinds of bridges.
• Support the use of artistic multimedia at workshops
• Establish arts centers in different cities which will provide academic artistic teaching for artists and help build bridges between the artists and their communities.

We invite you to submit your thoughts and ideas on how to keep batik alive.