Particolare – Nicholas Choong solo exhibition
Date : 15 – 31 March
Pavilion ELITE, LEVEL 2, Kuala Lumpur
Particolare (/par·ti·co·là·re/) is an Italian word which means particular, peculiar, and special, as well as an Italian guitarist Stefano Barone’s 2008 album title. Nicholas Choong, an emerging Malaysian artist, gives the name “Particolare” for his first solo show at Art WeMe Contemporary Gallery. It is not only inspired by Stefano Barone’s music which gives him strength during the journey of being an artist, but also a motto encourages himself to become a special one in art world.
Nicholas Choong creates cityscape series that contains his emotional responsiveness of living in Kuala Lumpur. Choong portraits a city scenery with dense and rich colors. Buildings are made of bold, scraping and slapping paints with palette knives. He applies cool colors on his city landscape that reveals cold and detached connections in a city. Lights of signs, buildings, cars’ headlights or reflection on rain illuminate the city. Paints drip onto canvas become different intermittent gleam of city lights. In Nicholas’s paintings, Kuala Lumpur is a city of lights that is full of energy and passion. However, there are loneliness and uncertainty behind a prosperous city.
Choong’s paintings are reminiscent of Paul Cézanne who was the master of Post-impressionism and had inspired Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and those modernism masters afterward. Cézanne stated “We must not paint what we think we see, but what we see” Choong said in his statement that “Through painting, I’ve observed things about myself and how I view the world”. Therefore, his paintings are unlikely to tell people what does a metropolitan city, such as Kuala Lumpur, look like, instead, he features an artist’s sentiment of what he feels about the city. Nicholas Choong, as well as Cézanne, spends much time to modulate colours. For the artist, this is a moment to make a conversation with his canvas, asking questions of what does the painting need and want me to do? During a constant conversation between the artist and his canvas, an artist’s concept is concretely formed in a painting.
Nicholas Choong was born in 1977. He studied watercolours under a mentor at the age of 13. When he was 16 he learnt Graphic Design, Sound Engineering and Photography working as a Production assistant in the film industry. Until 2011, he started painting and later joined the Sembilan Art Residency Programme in Seremban. During that time, he also mentored under Wei Ling Gallery and has continued to exhibit artworks in group and solo shows up until this day. In 2018, Nicholas Choong joined the esteemed Rimbun Dahan Arts Residency as a 3-months Southeast Asian Artist in Residence which culminated in his cityscapes works and had exhibited them at the National Art Gallery in Malaysia.
KL 47 Jalan Tun.H.S.Lee
122 x 183cm
Oil on Board
KL 46 Leboh Ampang
152.4 x 152.4cm
Oil on Board
KL 23
91.5 x 91.5cm
Oil on Canvas
Composition In Blue
91.5 x 91.5cm
Oil on Board
For more information about Nicholas Choong, click