Extract from "Masterpieces from the National Art Gallery of Malaysia"

《Nature of Roots》　183cm x 183cm　 Acrylic on canvas　1997

Born: 1974      

Education:  1994 - Malaysian institute of Art,Kuala Lumpur

　　Kelvin Chap is a younger generation Chinese artist who was born in Sarawak and presently lives in Kuala Lumpur. As a young boy he was fascinated with the culture of the Dayaks and he grew up interacting with many close Dayak friends. He has, in the last several years, produced a series of paintings that have highlighted the richness and excitement of Sarawak’s indigenous Dayak culture. His use of the silkscreen technique has allowed him the means of duplicating and repeating particularised images on the canvas surface, thereby creating stunning rhythmic effects. He uses brushed in bright colours as well to further enhance these specially selected, stencilled images. The result that he arrives at is an essentially lattened, tightly compressed collection of composite details on the canvas that celebrates one of the most colourful and complex tribal cultures of Southeast Asia.

　　The artist is, in this case, is not unlike a social anthropologist who has entered into a tribe’s environment and reveals to the outside world insights about a people, their beliefs and their unique way of life. Of course, it is a way of life that is already in danger of being overtaken by the rapid modernising processes taking place all around it. it is a way of life that is being eclipsed by a more contemporary,  secularistic, popular culture mode of living. The artist’s works are notable for the strong evocation of atmosphere and the recurring symbolic images that appear in them. For instance, his recurring use of the grand old Dayak chiefs as a central, dominant image, highlight the passing of a way of life and the slow but gradual disappearance of a generation of colourful, authentic warrior personages who had helped hold this rich, symbolic world together. His other often recurring images are the carved totem poles, the kenyalang carvings, the burial houses for the dead, the revered hornbill bird, the skulls of the decapitated enemies, the mythical aso dog and dragon motifs, and the many other tribal symbols and forms. And all this is very clearly evident in Nature and Roots, which is the work reproduced here. The work is charged with the cultural essences of one of Malaysia’s most potent and oldest symbolic cultures.