Rasa Rahsia is Riaz Ahmad Jamil’s first solo exhibition in twenty years, marking the explosive return of an artist into the public eye. His years spent denying the eye of the commercial world have seen him turn his characteristically bold brushstrokes inward to build a deeply personal practice: this exhibition is a portrait of an artist making his way through the jungle of a teetering world, in a futile attempt to hold the world around him in representation such that the ground, rather than shaking like an earthquake, merely becomes a tremor. On display in The Back Room is a wide range of paintings and drawings treading the fine line between figurative portraits and abstraction, as well as a selection of Riaz’s handmade brushes. It is an exploration into Rasa Rahsia, the feeling or taste of secrecy, where private gestural expressions are coaxed into life on the surfaces of the everyday.

About the Artist

Riaz Ahmad Jamil is a painter and printmaker. He graduated with a Diploma in Art and Design from the MARA Institute of Technology in 1986. Riaz’s exhibitions in Malaysia include a solo, Over The Time, at Space 2324 by the Goethe Institute, Kuala Lumpur, 2000. Selected group exhibitions include Bara Hati Bahang Jiwa: Expression and Expressionism in Contemporary Malaysian Artat the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, 2003; and Maya at Galeriwan, Kuala Lumpur, 1990. He has exhibited internationally in Bangladesh (12th Asian Art Biennale Bangladesh, 2006); Paris (Standard Format, 2001), Yogyakarta (October Gallery, 2002) and Osaka (Soul of Fire, Osaka International House Gallery, 1993). He lives and works in Klang.