작품 상세

Since Noor Mahnun Mohamed’s Am Abend (1993) raced to a dizzying premium of RM235,200 at the Henry Butcher April 29, 2018 auction, she has attracted scrutiny as one of the most watched artists of her age bracket. Her works are often imbued with dark psychological nuances, sedate and detached with a flattened space. The subject or theme is invariably about seemingly mundane, everyday action, or non-action, in an aura of silence, hinting at something more than the ordinary. Two figures in a room paradoxically hemmed in by cube matrix patterns, reflecting somewhat the artist’s truncated architectural background. One is holding the microphone and the other the dangling wire, set presumably on stage in a dance hall. Because of the composition and subdued colours, you seem to get an unnerving sense of isolation, distance, awkwardness, even ennui. So, if the song has yet to be sung, can you dance? Poised in a state of inertia... Noor Mahnun Mohamed, better known as Anum, is an artist, curator, art manager, lecturer and writer. She famously took up Art (BFA and MFA) when in Germany, at the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste, in Braunschweig, from 1989 to 1996. In 1995, she won 2nd Prize in the Alpirsbach Gallery competition. On her return, she won the artist’s residency in Rimbun Dahan (2000-2001) and Gunnery Studios in Sydney (2005). Her first four solos were in Europe, and she had two notable solos at the Valentine Willie Fine Art in Kuala Lumpur. NN Gallery held her solo in 2010, while The Edge Galerie held her solo, Disco Lombok Still Life by Noor Mahnun, in 2017. In 2002-2003, she won an Italian Government scholarship to study at the International School of Print and Graphic Il Bisonte, Florence, and in 2012-2013, the Nippon Foundation grant for Digital Archive for Printmaking.