Added Jan 10, 2004
Chin Kong Yee seeks his audience to feel and see what he has experienced in the creation of his art work. He has labeled his style as Actuality Accorded Painting (AAP), whereby, in painting and portraying an object, it has to have existed, and have undergone the process of being real, in order for it to be translated onto the canvas as Art. AAP, is basically the act of seeing-where the past, the present and the future is enveloped into one when one looks at an object. Once eye contact has been made through AAP, the images become the past. This can be seen in some of his cityscape works, namely Kull Mariyanan where “half of a moving taxi” gradually fades into the facade of a building.
The same theme is seen in his figurative works, where the model is painted over a period of a few hours, and thus never really stays in one position (movements and expressions however slight, are continually undulating). As the artist aptly says, ‘ / cannot subjectively decide how she looks, / can only portray her according to a combination of changing expressions, over a period of time... because the affinity between different individuals changes very subtly with every moment”.
To this artist, nothing is ever stagnant. Images are changing and evolving as you look at them. Space can never be measured or fixed, it is only present in the mobility of Time.
Kong Yee’s works evoke a some what surreal feel about them.By combining the present, past and future through a depiction of two perspectives (realistic and unrealistic) his paintings have an exciting, dramatic edge about them that draws the viewer into his space.