Pictures of Things presents recent painting works by Gan Siong King, a mid-career Malaysian artist, in an exhibition designed by the artist himself. Here, the exhibition becomes one of Gan’s mediums for communication and making meaning.

“It’s a mood.

I want to create a mood that is both bright and dark all at once. It is a memory of an exhibition I had wanted to make in those early months of the pandemic in 2020. Quiet, not loud. [The exhibition] should feel like a crisp blank piece of A4 paper. A space that the audience can use as a mirror and project whatever is in their heads. A bright comfortable place to stay, stare, read and rest…”

— Gan Siong King, an excerpt from his exhibition text, “A Sequence of Words Describing a Group of Pictures,” edited by Wong Hoy Cheong.

About the Artist

Gan Siong King (b. 1975, Kuala Lumpur) is a Malaysian artist who has been making paintings since the 1990s and videos since 2009. His work tries to unpack and rearrange “expectations,” probing art and its capacity for meaning-making. His video essays are often portraits of others and of himself, while his painting practice is mostly invested in testing its own parameters. In recent years, he has included writing and exhibition-making as part of his practice, working across these various formats as a bridge for communication and collaboration with others. 

He has participated in residencies and exhibitions all around the world. His most recent exhibitions were My Video Making Practice at Singapore Art Museum, Singapore, and All the Time I Pray to Buddha, I Keep on Killing Mosquitoes, at PJPAC, Malaysia, both in 2022. The latter exhibition was a screening of two videos made during his residency at Koganecho Bazaar, Yokohama, Japan, in 2020. Prior to that, other notable solo exhibitions (all in Kuala Lumpur) are All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace at A+ Works of Art in 2019; Meeting People is Easy at the artist’s studio in 2017; The Horror, The Horror at APW in 2015; and The Pleasures of Odds & Ends at Feeka in 2014. His works have been included in the Asian Art Biennial, Taichung (2021); Biennale Jogja XV – Equator #5, Yogyakarta (2019); and ILHAM Contemporary Forum, Kuala Lumpur (2017).