INNATE is a dialogue in the gallery that takes the pulse with five cognitive artists - Aki Hassan, Fyerool Darma, Filippo Sciascia, Jonathan Nichols, and Xue Mu - who create across various mediums and who have maintained a continual process-driven studio practice throughout the pandemic times. In this pluralistic exhibition, they articulate their latest findings and ideas in gestural movements present in the works that indicate the unseen processes that made them possible, highlighting the relationship between their works and themselves, or between the marks on the surface and their minds and bodies as the driving force behind them – the most indelible artist’s signature.
With emphasis on the rendering as well as the rendered, the concepts presented here are mostly in monochrome or muted colours and executed in a wide range of scales and techniques. Aki Hassan’s sculptural ruminations of the state of existence extend from the walls to point towards a yet-to-be-seen conclusion; taking cues from poetry or verbal sketches of the artist’s thoughts, the twisting metalworks seem to be in perpetual state of reconfiguration in accordance to what makes them feel some form of comfort or safety. Fyerool Darma’s Sajak drawings are a continuous interrogation into language through mark-making. Through a unique treatment, Jonathan Nichols’ mannequin subjects are brought to life, challenging the traditional view of painting and portraiture as an act of mere depiction. The outward burst of charcoal tracks in Xue Mu’s large-scale Black Diamond drawings are literal traces of her energetic movements and Filippo Sciascia’s latest objects in his Primitive series examines drawing as an instinctive way of making sense of our world, from an artistic and a scientific stance. Whether drawn, scratched, printed, painted, cut, welded, pasted or stitched on, every line and element in these works is imbued with intention, personal meaning, and the endeavor to understand and suggest the various dimensionalities of reality from the perspectives of different artists.