25th – 28th January; Gallery 2,
Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Singapore
This exhibition was held in conjunction with the Nafa Open-House 2007. I choose to present 160 of my automatic drawings, the samples can be viewed in my previous posting. These were done since starting my graduate studies on 6th of June 2006 (06-06-06), what a date to remember. I wanted to test public reaction, so I compiled them into A3 size clear folders which I then screwed to the padestal.
There were many visitors, mostly secondary school students. The thing I enjoyed most was looking at their bewildered faces as they flip through the drawings. I spoke to some of them, and when I explained that my drawings are spontaneous and direct with a brush, they thought I’m bluffing (rather flattering actually). As all the other works on display are works-in-progress, they expected to see my drawings with preliminary pencil marks. I would not call it automatic drawing if I had planned it with a pencil first. That’s more like mechanical drawing. I decided it was best to just observe my viewers reaction from a distance. I also had a grandiloquent label that reads:
‘Automatic Drawings‘ by Kamal Dollah, Ink on paper
Kamal draws spontaneously without planning or corrections. His drawings liberated a form of subliminal expression that is visibly a confluence of cultural conditioning and contemporary impositions. These drawings accumulated over time; They are like motifs culminating into an embodiment of works that postulates the complexities of ethnic identity in postmodern context.
