작품 상세

Glance is always a fascination, suggesting some measure of interest, albeit usually done furtively. In this Chong Ai Lei’s mock Mills and Boon one-panel paperback, the girl in a loose sleeveless red-striped tee, the girl looks just out of bed with her tresses slightly dishevelled. Her left leg curled up under the thigh of her other leg stretched downwards on the bed’s edge. Purity and innocence are suggested by the soft bedsheets. Something, a sound, somebody, piques her interest, and even her teddy bears are looking that way. She seems to be occupied with something, with a book and a camera on her bed, until distracted. Perhaps, there’s the strains of Nat King Cole’s song, Fascination, about “a passing glance, a brief romance”. Pertinently, what springs to mind is the scene from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, on the lovers’ first night together, which turned out to be their last. Held back by Juliet to stay longer, Romeo said: It was the lark, the herald of the morn No nightingale, Look, love, what envious streaks Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops One leg curled up under the thigh of the other leg stretched downwards on the bed’s edge. Chong Ai Lei is one of the earliest of Dasein’s fine petticoat brigade of artists, graduating in 2005. Doing something unusual, she decided to paint fulltime in 2010 after a stint at various jobs. Her daring was validated, for a slew of international exhibitions and expositions followed besides awards. She won the Malaysian Emerging Artists award (2011) after being a finalist in 2009; and Honourable Mentions in the American Freeman Fellowship Asian Artists Programme in 2010 and 2011. Her name became linked to top-draw shows like Art Stage Singapore and Art Stage Jakarta; the Start Art Fair in London (2014), Art Busan and Art Taipei (both in 2016), Kembara Jiwa (Bandung and Yogyakarta, 2012), Young Guns Singapore (2014) and Concurrence (Manila, 2014). She took part in solos abroad – PINK Sangkring Art Space, Yogyakarta, 2013, In The Room Galerie Canna, Jakarta, 2016, and in Hong Kong (2017), before having her first Malaysian solo, When I See You Again, at The Edge Galerie in January 2018. Her auction record of the equivalent of RM34,843, was set at Christie’s Hong Kong in November 2013, for True Romances II.