Mohd Azlan MAM
Kuala Lumpur , Malaysia
Website
www.azlanmam08.com
Social Media
Instagram
lesculture
How would you describe your work?
I love to challenge people to think beyond the obvious. I want people to confront their mental processes of comprehension, judgment, memory, and reasoning, as opposed to emotional and volitional processes. When dealing with visual representations of society, I feel I can best illuminate them through what I call as an ancillary criticism. My art portrays the irony of life through faceless portraits or images, strong shadows, dark silhouettes and those are more often with the intent of bringing about improvement in the society. I see folly everywhere and I try to capture these fragments of society through metaphoric analogies or allegories. This, I believe should be one of the artist’s ‘code of ethics’, along with genuine representation of the artist’s point of view and originality of ideas.
I present artifacts and objects as evidence with semiotic fragment , or as ghostly traces that seem to have floated upward of their own accord from the lucid depths of the oracle-photographer’s or artist’s developing tray. These eventually open up a new dimension of critical dissection of understanding methodology.
More than serving up a one-dimensional intellectual game or rationalized grid on which to hang arguments or logical summations, my juxtaposed images and my artistic visions seduce and play with our mental and intuitive processes, hint at something more, draw us close, then cut us loose again as we seek to create some linear conclusion about their potential meanings.
And the meanings—the stories—are there, as they are in any well-composed piece of music or poetry of society daily plight and exasperation . My personal visual poetry of our own cultures and identity are enveloped in my representation of image-making module , and as with any element of , or character in a story, each reader interprets his or her own slightly angled version, as though through a reflection in a private mirror in which perceptions share equal weight and position beside the light that belongs to us all. However, the light glances away quickly from any hierarchy, leaving only faint or bold impressions in our ruffled minds.
What inspires you?
In 1993 I was accepted to pursue my study in Biomedical Imaging in College of Medical Imaging of Medical Faculty , University of Malaya, Malaysia. It was a complete revolutionary turning point of my entire visual imaging and image making endeavor. During my foundation years, I was introduced to most of prominent important imaging modalities and comprehensive practice in Fundamentals, Basics, and Principles in Photo-Radiography and Bio-medical Diagnostic Imaging. Dark room processing was my regular practice when dealing with most of my important post diagnostic image processing for medical diagnostic evaluation and assessment/reporting. I was channel by my lecturers to understand another biggest aspect of imaging and image making paradigm not only from imaging sphere but also from the psychological and aesthetics fundamental aspect. This new paradigm has shifted and shaping me as a new species of artist or image maker with a proper utilization of chemistry and physical processes that able to make numerous alternative copies or duplication of things, make things more exact, and accessible for specific distinctive medical reportage. Those were my new subconscious mold of methodology and it has engrave a sharp vision and idea of how to conceptualize a new form of art and sciences that not to be taught in any art institution from contextual syllabus of their normal formalistic studies.
Can you speak about your process?
In 2010, I have started my first batch of caffeinated art paper (Fabriano) and fixing some random coffee staining by soaking those paper in a fixer tank fill with coffee and this will be my primary printmaking medium. As an artist that raised up and growing up in the heart of Kuala Lumpur (capital city of Malaysia), I was exposed early to the daily struggles of life in the city: the disparity between the lives of the rich , the middle class and the poor is more amplified here than anywhere else in our country. This fascinated me even at an early age and it compelled me to ‘document’ numerous scenes of the daily inflections via my “ imaginary “ sketches and collage works . It has since then developed into a rhetorical ‘calling’ for me – a social order that I feel should be represented artistically with another medium and in this case I have opted for photography assemblage or photomontage and medium format camera as my medium of choice. My sketch work has been the early foundation of my art and methodology as an artist before I moved to apply a new central feature of my art practice ; caffeinated art paper , risograph , graphite , dermatograph , ink deconstruction , photocollage , hand tint and mixed media as my various form of installation.
How did you become interested in art?
As a primary school student (at 12 years old), I had no access to any photographic medium despite being actively into drawing and water coloring.. But back then when I was in my secondary school, Muar Science Secondary Residential School (SAMURA) , I was introduced to my first photography club in 1990. I had no chance to try any analogue cameras at that period of time. I spent most of my leisure hours in school with drawing and water coloring since then. As a non-art stream student, I shaped my internal quest and inquiries within myself and the surroundings and with multi references from the school library and books , I have shaped my transparent vision about the social issues affecting my society at the period of time. It was subconsciously my earlier foundation of image -making paradigm.
Do you have any favorite artists, movies, books, or quotes?
Anselm Kiefer, Boris Groys and Enzo Cucchi
What advice do you have for younger artists?
Perseverance. A photographer or an artist must start with knowledge or ideas. Besides the knowledge of world order and the current modernism issue , we must also have a proper understanding that the meeting point of an artist and the viewers is the use of the reality as a reference. That’s what makes that specific body of work is significant and relevant. Imagination and thinking process or critical thought are mutually an exclusive constructive and structural foundation of any given photographer or an artist. As an alternative hybrid process and art practitioner , the maximum aesthetics usage of my photographic medium empowers the previsualization of the image and lead the audience to an appreciation of the process. The more control the artist has, the more respectable his work.
Art engagement is a path to understand others. Mentalizing and mind reading from each of our photography evidence is an ongoing process.
Any more thoughts about art, creativity, or anything else you would like to share?
I am a firm believer that the modern/contemporary artist is a collaborator in this new paradigm of image making and their final presentation or representative. Every such artwork operates by deforming and dissolving traditional artistic forms like what we have seen for the last decades. I am an alternative artist with a great responsibility not only as an artist but also as a “documenter” of the times. I want to create awareness about what is going on around us not only in Malaysia but globally as we are now seeing the death of humanity . Art is a recording medium and we are sharing our past experiences as in the sense of sacred visual form with the new vision , the new opinion and the new truth. Scientists, humanists, and art lovers alike value art not just for its beauty, but also for its social and epistemic importance; that is, for its communicative nature, its capacity to increase one’s self-knowledge and encourage personal growth, and its ability to challenge our schemas and preconceptions. The challenging role I play here is remaining steadfast to my artistic voice and my art convention.
I have no fear at all in taking a different approach because every such attempt of demoralization can be immediately confronted with a counterexample. The assertion that modern art escapes any generalization is the only generalization that is still allowed. One must make a choice, take sides, be committed and march with their own concept and narrative.
