Photo by Kenta Chai
The most impossible kind of artist
These things in the gallery are called sky dancers, also known as “tube men” or “tall boys”, and they are commonly placed outside car dealerships to catch the attention of drivers. Sometimes the impossible makes you ecstatic, it makes you deliriously, deliciously happy, because you know you could never achieve it, not in a thousand lifetimes. Sometimes it’s better to have your heart broken. Desire blooms through withheld gratification. chi too is in tune with the reality of never enjoying the possession of something as much as the turmoil of desiring it — when it is still ripe for your projection and daydreams.
Projection is, in fact, a creative act. Don’t think too much about what the work means. It’s here today and gone tomorrow. This exhibition (if it can even be termed as such) only spans a little over a week. Should it be taken seriously as an entry in chi too’s oeuvre? If there’s anything I know about his work, where he seemingly riffs off ideas that pop randomly into his mind, it’s that nothing matters and everything matters. All at once, all the time.
— EL
Photo by Kenta Chai
About the Artist
chi too (b. 1981, Kuala Lumpur) is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist whose educational background is in Mass Communication and Sound Engineering. His practice demonstrates a confident exploration of humour, satire, and visual poetics. It is at times difficult to say exactly what he does as an artist, largely because his artworks touch on a large spectrum of themes and issues. His practice vacillates between the high-minded and the frivolous, the social and the personal, the transparent and the esoteric.
His experimental music, performances, and playful self-organised public art projects such as Main Dengan Rakyat, Everything’s Gonna Be Alright, and Lepark display an interest to engage with urban spaces and audiences that form his practice's complex multifaceted approach to his practice. chi too was also a member of the disbanded art collective The Best Art Show in the Univers. He has since participated in various exhibitions and performance events in Malaysia and abroad, on top of being an artist-in-residence at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art (NTU CCA) Singapore in 2017 and a Nippon Foundation Asian Public Intellectual (API) fellow in 2011.
Including the current exhibition, chi too has had seven solo exhibitions to date: 95, The Zhongshan Building, Kuala Lumpur (2020); Sometimes When We Touch, OUR ArtProjects, Kuala Lumpur (2018); Like Someone In Love, Lostgens' Contemporary Art Space, Kuala Lumpur (2015); The Artist chi too Looks at Artworks as He Contemplates the State of the Nation’s Institutions a.k.a. How Can You Be Sure, Art Row @ Publika, Kuala Lumpur (2013); State of Doubt: Seven Actions Towards Dilemma, Art Lab AKIBA, Tokyo, Japan (2012); and Longing, Black Box, MAP @ Publika, Kuala Lumpur (2011). He has participated in OPEN GATE 2017, Sapporo International Art Festival, Japan; OPEN GATE 2016, Aichi Triennale, Japan; and OPEN GATE 2015, Hin Bus Art Depot, Penang, Malaysia. His works have also been included in The Body Politic and The Body at ILHAM Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2019); Stories We Tell To Scare Ourselves With at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taiwan (2019); The Breathing of Maps at the Yamaguchi Centre for Arts and Media, Yamaguchi, Japan (2018); and Singapore Biennale 2013: If the World Changed. In 2022, he was featured in Phaidon's latest publication, Prime - Art's Next Generation, a compilation of "the most exciting rising stars in contemporary art", featuring 107 artists born since 1980.