"The process is meditative and silent because it allows certain orders and structures to articulate my thoughts when painting, hence the reference to this series as an act of contrasting the sound (chaos) by counting the silence (order) of each space and grid.
Each painting and the configurations of the paintings in Counting Silence will continue to evolve with each encounter and the interplay, and in the larger scheme of things, how a finished painting could play its part, or how fabricated constituent building parts would to a larger architectural structure, will only ever present its significance in the space and context of its individual existence."
Curated by Amanda Ariawan and Yap Sau Bin
Rissim Contemporary presents Paul Nickson Atia’s (b. 1992, Sarawak; lives and works in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) third solo exhibition Counting Silence, Filling Space, Weaving Conversation. An extensive series resulted from a meditative process that had put him alone in the face of over a hundred canvases, painting a myriad of squares. These seemingly uniform yet actually unique pieces will be presented in the gallery space from 16th July to 7th of August, inviting us to engage by counting boxes, comparing patterns, and imagining configurations.Counting Silence is the first body of work by the artist that accentuates and affirms his vision of modularity in paintings, through a manual and experience that offer several configurations of how these works may inhabit our space
Ritual is the way the artist treats painting, whereby it is considered as a personal and sacred act, simultaneously artistic. The process embodies devotion; starting with priming canvases, carefully drawing lines to form even grids, and, using a single brush, applying Chinese ink in various levels of thickness, withintricate patterns manifesting. Akin to one’s communication with the divine, it is an experience that is silent and leaves others with nothing more than abstract traces. Imprints of the artist’s self-reflection, in which he absorbedly recounted his worships, as well as blessings and sins of a life lived.
Atia’s delving into the idea of obsession dates back to his early practice of line drawing, which served him as a visual language to express his fascination with cityscapes. Those lines were perhaps the roots of what formed his grids today, in which obsession is evident in the way he repeatedly fills empty spaces with canvas and proceeds consistently from one canvas to another. Putting forward this modus operandi in the current Counting Silence series, the artist sees no end to his process, with time being the only limit of production. Thus, the number of works that will end up filling the walls of the exhibition space
Finding it crucial to create dialogues as mean to extend from the artist’s personal relationship with the series, the exhibition setting explored by two curators involve the amalgamation of multiple conversations.
Taking various keywords as points of departure, exchanges of thoughts will take place between the artist and curators over a course of time. Extracts of the conversation will be presented subtly, anonymously, and in an aleatory manner below artworks, almost like whispers that will permeate and challenge the silence which imbues the gallery space.
Selected words will also be part of a manual that the artist intends to make available for visitors and collectors, to whom the artist decided to trust the artworks’ autonomy. Counting Silence is the first body of work by the artist that accentuates and affirms his vision of modularity in paintings. Intersecting Bauhaus concept with his own adaptive choice of form, the manual will present several illustrated configurations of how the paintings in this series may be displayed. Curated compositions will also be displayed in the gallery - stimulating limitless possibilities of how these works could occupy the space we are in, and speculation of Atia’s vision to come.
