Exhibitions

The Horizon is Just an Illusion presents recent strategies and approaches to landscape as a subject in Malaysian art, as well as the various possibilities of using natural elements in art-making. Landscape art has traditionally focused on natural beauty, often featuring magnificent views of land, sea and sky. Over time, landscape also became a critical tool to communicate social, ethical, economic and political realities as a backdrop for human history. However, while these approaches remain relevant in Malaysia today, the exhibition moves beyond straightforward representational observation and sociopolitical staging, and aims to embrace alternative stories, re-imaginings, myths, fragments and other souvenirs for a contemporary recollection of place. We know landscape can be beautiful and also sociopolitical, but what other emotions and aesthetic curiosities can the landscape provide? How can it be used as a source in the making of art to convey both epic and intimate ideas of the past, present and even the future? By defining the horizon — a visual grounding device and key element in the construction of picture planes in art — as an optical illusion, traditional ideas unravel as artists create an alternative visioning of place and space to rethink how we see the world around us.