Masnoor Ramli Mahmud or for short, Manon, is a prominent Malaysian artist known for his interdisciplinary approach, merging video, installation, and digital art with traditional painting. He graduated from Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) and became one of the founding members of MATAHATI, a highly influential art collective in Malaysia. Manon's work often explores themes of identity, socio-political issues, and cultural heritage, reflecting his deep engagement with Malaysian society and its transformations. His ability to combine digital media with conventional art forms has set him apart, positioning him as a pioneer in the Malaysian art scene.

Over his career, Masnoor has received multiple awards and exhibited widely in prominent local and international venues, cementing his role as a critical figure in Southeast Asian contemporary art. Through his art and his involvement with MATAHATI, Manon has significantly impacted the development of Malaysian art, inspiring a generation of artists to challenge norms and explore new mediums. His thought-provoking installations and multimedia work continue to push boundaries, encouraging discourse on Malaysia's identity in a rapidly globalizing world. 



Jonas Burgert paints a stage every time that he lifts his brush: with every stroke, with every composition. His works depict the inexhaustible theatre play that Burgert considers to be human existence: man’s need to make sense of his purpose in life. It is a quest that seems inconclusive, but which opens doors to every sphere of reasoning, imagination and desire. Oversized canvases are crowded with fantastical figures of different proportions. Jonas Burgert graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, Berlin, in 1996 and consecutively studied for a postgraduate title (Meisterschueler) under Professor Dieter Hacker in Berlin.
 
Since 1998, his work has been on view in numerous group shows around the world, including “Geschichtenerzaehler”, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, 2003, and “Triumph of Painting Part VI” , London’s Saatchi Gallery, 2006. Since 2006 Burgert’s work has been on view in solo exhibitions around the world.
 
Selected Solo Exhibitions include “ein Dorn weich: Recent Drawings”, Stephen Ongpin Fine Art, London (UK, 2022); “raub und bleib”, Produzentengalerie, Hamburg (Germany, 2022); “blüht und lügt” , Long Museum West Bund, Shanghai (China, 2021); “Blindstich” , Tang Contemporary Art, Beijing (China, 2020); “Sinn frisst”, Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck (Germany, 2020); “Ein Klang Lang”, Tang Contemporary Art (Hong Kong SAR, China, 2019), etc. Selected group exhibitions include “FLOWER”, Choi&Choi Gallery, Seoul (Korea, 2022);  “German Painting Now”, Telegraph Gallery, Olomouc (Czechia, 2021); “Szene Berlin”, Hall Art Foundation (Germany, 2020); “Kirchner · Richter · Burgert, me Collectors Room Berlin”, Olbricht Foundation (Germany, 2019); “Where is the Madness You Promised Me”, Hudson Valley MOCA, New York (USA, 2019), etc.
 
Public collections include Long Museum, Shanghai; Burger Collection, Hong Kong; Denver Art Museum, US; Rubell Family Art Collection, US and Taguchi Art Collection, Japan.

In her paintings, Prae Pupityastaporn produces layered continuums of observation and memory. She draws from the overlooked minutiae of daily life, building an illusive catalogue of her material surroundings. Deftly extracting from the latent and the mundane, Pupityastaporn transforms seemingly dull objects into active deposits of evolution: a showerhead, a wall or a rock acquires mercurial ability in her works, storing shifts of the emotional and the environmental. Intertwining streams of the subconscious, Pupityasporn offers dreamlike insight into the flux and fragility of memory, both personal and shared. Most influenced by her physical environments, Pupityastaporn synthesises her experiences in Germany and Thailand. During her studies in Germany, she was exposed to reinventions of the landscape genre in the region’s early contemporary art scene; the artist has since followed her predecessors in creating a pioneering visual vocabulary, establishing a distinct approach of distanced liminality. Her paintings demonstrate the shifting possibilities of shared emotional fabrics, proving how each of our complex internal states can color perceptions of the external world. She awakens a unique set of memories and feelings in each viewer, and quietly transforms those associations once again in her practice of retrieval and repatterning.

Jourdain Jongwon Lee is sculptor, and artist based in New York. He moved to the United states from Korea in 2010 and had M.F.A. from Long Island University. He has been working on his ‘Golem’ series since 2008 through Seoul to New York. The name of series, Golem is originally from Jewish folk lore. Golem is an animated anthropomorphic being, created entirely from inanimate matter. The Golem series is connected to the idea of protection, guardian, and golem which is connected to shamanism in Korea.

This work begins from the wall that individuals inevitably confront while living in reality. The feeling of wanting to do something for someone, yet realizing that there is almost nothing one can actually do, generates a sense of frustration that takes the form of longing. However, this longing does not function as consolation; instead, it remains as a persistent irritation, scratching at a corner of the mind.

This longing cannot be grasped. It feels too distant, approaching as an illusion seemingly unrelated to oneself. And yet, the act of wishing—like clinging to someone’s pant leg—offers no comfort. There is an unease, as if one is yearning for something that should not be desired. This contradictory state forms the emotional point of departure for the work.

This feeling recalls a scene from the film Parasite, in which the protagonist imagines that one day he will buy the house and reunite with his father. That desire is less a form of hope than a fantasy rendered all the more tragic by its distance from reality. This work remains within precisely such a state of “answerless longing.”

The project focuses on the imagery of talismans believed to ward off misfortune and invite good fortune. Traditional auspicious symbols such as the Seven-Star Horse, the three-legged crow, and the pig appear through repetitive stitching and drawing. Yet these images do not promise protection or comfort; rather, they resemble gestures of excessive desperation. They are less acts of faith than attempts to forcibly grasp and summon something at all costs.

The accumulated labor of the hand on soft, fragile materials fixes longing into material form, but the belief that it might actually be effective never reaches completion. This work is not an act of praying for fortune, but a revelation of the state of being compelled to long for it.
What scratches is not the surface, but the mind.

Ever since I discovered saturated music (Franck Bedrossian, Raphael Cendo) ten years ago at the Versailles Conservatoire, the theme of Excess has become central both to my work as an ar=st and in my personal musings. While challenging the ra=onale of our ultra- modern socie=es and their economic and societal models, my pain=ngs, in a combina=on realism and abstrac=on, explore this concept of excess, in par=cular through the philosophy of Georges Bataille, literature (Pierre Guyotat, Kathy Acker, Hermann Ungar and many others) and contemporary films.
The despicable, the sublime, ero=cism and death are all spheres in which excess comes into play, and I try to connect them in elaborate composi=ons that draw as much on tradi=onal pictorial techniques as on more contemporary aesthe=cs.
I believe that Pain=ng, and Art in general, are at their origins, the expression of an Impossible that derives as much from vacuity as from surpassing limits.

I am constantly in search of people and places that bring me a sense of stability. In life, I am always confronted with certain thresholds where I long for steadiness. At those boundaries, I find myself seeking environments and situations that help me maintain a calm emotional state. Most of these are familiar to me: my family, my home, my room, and the surroundings that have held me for a long time. When I ask myself where the process of being filled and forming a sense of self first began, I cannot leave out home and family. I hold close to my heart the softness and warmth of these things, and the precious moments at home where I can express my feelings honestly. In doing so, I try to preserve a quiet emotional balance. It was only natural, then, that the act of painting and the choice of what to paint began with what was closest to me. As I step into the home and room marked by my own traces, I find myself covering over the unstable emotions I could not express outside, and recovering a sense of calm and peace. I capture in my paintings the blue wallpaper close to my body, the scattered blue clothes, the blue blankets and pillows—objects that bear the touch of my hand. Along with them, I try to hold within the painting the tactile sensations of these things against the skin, as well as the emotions of those moments: the comfort, warmth, and tenderness that arise from familiarity.

The feeling of fur brushing between my toes,
the rush of air when my father lifts the blanket high and lets it fall while I am lying down,
the snug warmth of tucking the blanket tightly around my body,
the feeling of touching the cool temperature that has settled into the pillow because of the wind outside,
the soft texture of an old blanket worn thin with holes,
a pair of socks turned inside out on the floor,
the faint sunlight slipping through the blinds,
the sunlight and brightness that reach me as I lie down,
the moon visible through the window before sleep...

I gather these emotions and sensations from my own place and wrap them together, trying to paint their atmosphere and energy. In the process of expression, the act of applying materials softly onto hanji, or tearing its surface to reveal its delicate fibres, has itself become a process through which I find emotional calm. Through the repeated gestures of laying down thick layers of paint and scraping them away, or raising the surface of the hanji, I attempt to convey indirectly a kind of fluffy, tender warmth even through the material surface itself.
Ultimately, I hope that a painting, shaped by the attitude revealed in both the subject I look at and the process of making, can become a bearer of warmth—something held close at one’s side—and that the scope of this warmth may gradually expand.

It focuses on the anxiety and contradictions within the complex situations of life, as well as the subtle movements within them. It seeks images that capture the emotions and presence of beings who live through the world, colliding with it on a visceral level. It pursues images that can embody the will and complex emotions that arise at the boundaries where human strength confronts the world, encapsulating the power of existence within them. It visualizes the condensed emotions and forces within moments where existence interacts with matter in a chain of responses.

Hime was born in Osaka, Japan in 1986. 
From 2004 to 2007, he studied in the Comic Art Course at the Faculty of Manga, Kyoto Seika University. In 2008, Hime entered the fashion industry and embarked on his journey as a fashion photographer. In 2013, he moved to the United States for foreign brand shoots and returned to Tokyo the following year. Starting from 2019, he also pursued a freelance career as a digital illustrator, including clothing prints, music album covers, live performance and pop-up event posters. In late 2020, Hime painted his first artwork using acrylic on canvas, which was exhibited at artKYOTO, marking the beginning of his artist career. His works mainly feature women with an 80s aesthetic and have garnered widespread attention, making him a highly acclaimed artist.

Soon.Easy - BTS's J-Hope owns "SUGAR CANDY MOUNTAIN #10," and the artist is well-known in the Asian region.


Jonghwan Lee attempts to extract the vitality of painting from the illusion of paintings medium's physical relationship. For this purpose, he frequently combines pictures from his prior works with new elements. Instead of being recognised for what the image itself represents, they are recognised as a material for paintings. Through the interaction between image and medium, vision and reality, the artist evokes the painting with a subjective vital eye. In addition, while he dissects, penetrates, deconstructs, examines the relationship between pictures produced in paintings and mediums, and investigates the 'vitality of painting.' The process begins with the hypothesis and repeats as 'production-observation-confirmation-hypothesize-resetting'. There are no such things as an independent project; rather, they are interconnected, moving forward and continuously reflecting.

Intense Abstract Painting Using Light and Physical Properties.

Director Jacq / Wayn Traub (Brussels, 1972), is a visionary Belgian artist whose practice dissolves the boundaries between film, theatre, textile art, and sacred ritual. His work is driven by a pursuit of “Total Art”, a seamless, immersive fusion of image, sound, and lived experience.
Director Jacq holds a Master’s degree in Film Directing and Art History. His career began in visual arts, with early explorations in video and intricate hand-embroidered textiles, before evolving into groundbreaking stage direction. From 2004 to 2012, he served as Artistic Director at institutions including Bourla Opera in Antwerp and Le Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, collaborating with icons such as Jane Birkin and Alejandro Jodorowsky.
Since 2012, Director Jacq has been based in Thailand, where his focus has returned profoundly to the material and narrative possibilities of textile. Here, he creates his monumental hand-embroidered copes—each requiring four to five months of meticulous stitching on traditional Thai fabrics—weaving personal mythology into devotional objects.

He is internationally celebrated as the pioneer of “Cinema Opera,” a form of multidisciplinary ritual theater that transforms the stage into a space of communal initiation. In Director Jacq’s philosophy, art is not merely observed but entered, felt, and lived, an act of spiritual awakening and transformation.


Beyond his studio practice, Director Jacq is an avid curator, collector, and cultural catalyst, collaborating with museums such as S.M.A.K. in Belgium and MOCA Bangkok. His multidisciplinary vision continues to expand, always seeking the point where craftsmanship, cinema, and ceremony become one.

N5BRA, also known as Nobra, began his career in illustration and has since expanded into painting. His distinctive name reflects a playful and intense experience, adding logic to his fragmented identity and allowing him to freely express his way of life. His work initially focused on the human body, gradually expanding to themes of self-portraiture and existentialism.

In his artwork, the body is a crucial element. The recurring female nudes are both a primary subject and a central theme of his pieces. Some interpret these nudes as objectifying and othering the female body or as tools to reveal sexuality linked to his pseudonym. However, in reality, his nudes are a form of self-portrait. The eroticism in his works stems from human existence and the anxiety it brings.

Through his art, N5BRA poses ontological questions to the audience. These questions have transitioned into a new medium, oil painting. The thick texture and multiple layers of oil paint demonstrate the artist's process of proving his existence within the void of meaninglessness. The oil medium captures the intersection of N5BRA’s experiential life and objective perspective. This desire for self-rootedness and validation stems from his experiences of anxiety without a clear object.

The figures in his works reflect his inner turmoil as he searches for purpose and direction in life. The intertwined curves are striking, and the organic structure is not arranged with a single purpose but emerges from countless strokes and accidental elements on the canvas, creating abstract forms.

The inner anxiety and life's struggles cannot be expressed through a simple plane or a single line. The generally dark tones, deep contrasts, expressionless gazes of the figures, and undulating lines and brushstrokes suggest a long-standing anxiety submerged in calmness. The emphasized dynamism and randomness are arranged according to N5BRA’s unique sense, evoking a life of chaos and stability, harmony and imbalance, progress and stagnation.

Ndayé Kouagou (1992) is an artist and performer based in Paris; his practice begins with text, which is expanded upon through performance, film, textiles, sculpture and installation. Kouagou manipulates the reduced language of aphorism and aesthetics on which the digital landscape of TikTok and Instagram is built, creating immersive environments that both confront and seduce the viewer. Using screens, plexiglass, resin and aluminium, Kouagou presents the viewer with elliptical statements and open-ended, existentially leading questions, simulating a meandering dialogue that borrows from the language of online influencers and self-help. Surface and depth, humour and sincerity, clarity and confusion are granted equivalent significance in Kouagou’s work as he playfully explores the forms and effects of mediated communication.

Rimm Chae uses ottchil (Korean lacquer) to jump back and forth between past and present as well as East and West as she creates a powerful visual expression of the marvelous journey of nature. At Art Miami, held from November 29 to December 4, Chae presents a monumental work entitled Mountain and Island, her artistic interpretation of ideological colors and saekdong (traditional multi-colored stripes) that reflects a distinctly Korean sentiment.

JEJn usually attempts to depict incomplete human nature through paintings. People today reject their underlying sentiments of fear, incompleteness, and weakness to naturally avoid them. However, the fragmentary phenomena that result from these emotions are also believed to be part of human nature, and the artist interprets and conveys these inconvenience things through his individual sense of humour and cartooning technique. He asks the audience what would happen if the heaviness and hardness of the facts that people are confronting were presented to them as a hilarious black comedy. 

POSE began painting graffiti in 1992 and in years since has expanded his vigorous career to include murals, commercial collaborations and exhibitions around the globe. He earned his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2004, and then turned his own graffiti education into a body of work blending a wealth of pop culture’s ready-made visual languages. Street signage, comics, newspapers and advertisements are reimagined through dissection, digitization and reconstitution, collectively immortalizing post-industrial moments for the digital age. POSE was named “One to Watch” by CNN in 2015, and has exhibited in the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Powerlong Museum Shanghai, Museum of Contemporary Art Chengdu, and Chosun Ilbo Museum of Art, Seoul, among others. His work is enjoyed in numerous private collections worldwide.


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