Fauzan Omar

Extract from "Masterpieces from the National Art Gallery of Malaysia"

《Layer Series》1982　Mixed Media　195cm x 125cm

Born: 1951

Education:

1969 - School of Art & Design, University Technology MARA (UiTM), Shah Alam

1982 - Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore

　　Fauzan Omar surfaced within the local art scene during the late Eighties. He reflected the new non-personalised abstractionist developments that marked the efforts made to challenge the dominant emotive-gestural and highly personalised approaches of the Malaysian Abstract Expressionists. Influenced by the ideas and attitudes of the New Scene artists, this younger artist, a graduate from the ITM School of Art and Design, had also bypassed the new Malay-Islamic impulses of the Eighties, that many of his generation were involved with. He was influenced by international frames of artistic reference and his interest was in perceptual and coloristic considerations.

　　These formal interests of his are noticeable in the work reproduced here. This large work has a busy “ripped up” look about it and it is filled with all manner of coloured shapes floating across the pictorial field. Movement is activated. He used illusionistic effects when he felt the need to tease the viewer’s eye. For instance, the red used for the bottom background will suddenly become linked to a smaller red shape floating against another coloured shape. Is it a separate shape or a bit of exposed red background? There is also the suggestion that a particular shape has been pasted on to the canvas and it turns out to be really so. There is also the simulation of collagistic effects. Some parts of the canvas have been cut to merge the pictorial space with real space. Some of these cuts have been sewn up. He has focused on warm colours and cool colours and set up tensions between them. The resultant effect was an emphasis on fragmented looking surface shapes that had an optical “push and pull” effect on the eye. The work also suggests a sense of deep space by the use of perspective effects subtly used. It was, despite the strong expressive colours and shapes used, a non-emotional approach to creativity. It was determined by a strong sense of design and a controlled manipulation.