Artist Statement

‘I keep inside myself, in my private museum, everything I have seen and loved in my life.’ -Andre Malraux

Life as we know it has completely changed. Perhaps forever. As I continue to work in my studio in lockdown and complete isolation, I find myself seeking solace within painting, maybe as a way to cope with the ever increasing anxiety of the current state of the world, maybe as a form of escapism, or maybe even as a form of therapy. Either way, painting has always served me as a window to observe and deconstruct, to position an image within a frame of reality and reality within a frame. Continuing from my last exhibition entitled ‘Sanctuary’, this small body of works depict still life and interior scenes that are completely collaged and imaginary.

At the time of writing, Malaysia has spent 3 months in complete lockdown under the 3rd Movement Control Order (M.C.0). As society continues to form new modes of communicating and working, I find the ‘image’ that we continually converse to, either from the screen of a laptop or a smartphone, is continually evolving just as much as our psyche to connect to one another. Technology has enabled us to converse virtually but in reality are we simply talking to machines that display and project our image unto a virtual reality? In these times where we can connect to multiple entities and be informed, misinformed and entertained all at once in an instant without even speaking a single word or meeting in person changes every relationship dynamic we have to every person we know? And if so, has society started to lose it’s traits such as empathy, self awareness and human emotions? Our existence simply being condensed into a gunk of digital personas, statistics and noise. Are we even human anymore? Let’s take a breather.

Viewers are presented with elements of daily life, creating narratives that reflect contemporary reality. Simplistically depicted lone figures, gatherings of people and spaces are reconstructed in a cut and paste method of composition. Views from windows create paintings within paintings, contrasting the mediated and highly saturated world we currently live in. The various scenes feature sections of imagined landscapes in monochromatic colours, to portray scenery that is not limited to preconceived notions of what is seen as reality - seeing is not believing and what we see is not necessarily the truth.

Justin Lim
Kuala Lumpur, November 2021