Once a year, the who’s who of the art world flock to New York City for the innovative art fairs that commence during what is known as Art Week. Desmond Lim Zhengs attended the cutlog art fair in New York and discovered a Malaysian gallery that boasts some serious art cred.

Housed in a historical building in NewYork City’s Lower East Side neighbourhood, the 2014 Cutlog Art Fair hosts an impressive curation of art dealers and galleries from around the world. Nestled in a cosy corner sits Fuman Art Gallery. A participant of the art fair, Kuala Lumpur-based Fuman Art Gallery had Stephane Blanquet’s handpainted lattice-esque illustrations, Minoru Sugiyama’s eccentric paintings, and Nunelucio Alvarado’s expressive drawings hung on its repurposed walls.

Upon closer inspection of the art fair, the other participating galleries possess similar experimental approaches to art. Suffice to say, the latticework illustrations and surrealist paintings feel right at home. One thing that stood out was that Fuman Art Gallery was the sole gallery originating from Southeast Asia. Visitors to the cosy corner were spared the traditional Asian artworks commonly associated with Asian art galleries; in its place hung beguiling paintings, illustrations, toys, and artwork in surrealist, dark, sometimes sinister themes.

Fuman Art Gallery might be Asia-based, but with a roster of international artists such as French Stephane Blanquet, Japanese Aoi Fujimoto and Minoru Sugiyama, Argentinian Gustavo Charif, Filipino Nunelucio Alvarado, Malaysian Noor Azizan Rahman Paiman, and more, the artworks and perspectives are naturally global. It is worth noting that unlike most galleries in Kuala Lumpur, Fuman Art is the only gallery that fully represents international artists. This international curation of artists is not at all unintentional. “The underlying theme between the artists is basically based on my taste. Besides, I truly believe in the scope of their work,” explained Antoine Fremon, who co-founded the gallery with Kuala Lumpur native Khoo Hsein Huey.

“We essentially want to create exposure for these artists, Malaysian and foreign, in the local market as well as internationally,” said Khoo. Having also participated in Cutlog Art Fair in Paris, Fuman Art was able to represent these artists in an international platform. This same idea resonates at Cutlog NewYork, with an intention to introduce Argentinian, Japanese, and Southeast Asian works to a sophisticated international audience, to much positive responses. At the art fair in NewYork, the founders enthusiastically highlighted the pieces that were already sold. One in particular was the Keeichi Tanaami graphic books, produced and printed by Stephane Blanquet. The illustrations were an exercise of Eastern andWestern iconography mashup, truly one of a kind.

Interestingly, a handful of visitors at Cutlog Art Fair recognized Blanquet’s work from back issues of BLAB magazine published almost 10 years ago. Coincidently, Fremon too discovered Blanquet via BLAB magazine when he visited NewYork many years ago. He connected with Blamquet and brought him to Japan for a slew of movie screenings, talks, and engagements with his Japanese fanbase. Since then, they forged a relationship that would grow over time. The same formula applies to the other artists the gallery represents, all of whom they share long personal relationships with. Fremon interestingly pointed out that the artists are from the same generation and share the same culture.” Chemistry is an important factor when it comes to working with the artists, it’s like meeting people, building relationships, and boosting conversations,” he said passionately.

Partners professionally and in life, Khoo and Fremon met while both were living in Japan. Khoo was pursuing her MBA in Japan while French-born Fremon was involved with the art scene in Tokyo. After living in Japan for a few years, they decided to relocate to Khoo’s hometown and established Fuman Art Gallery in Glenmarie Industrial Park. “There is less competition in KL, it’s more affordable compared to neighbouring cities, and has a growing sophisticated middle class with young professionals,” Fremon explained of the decision to set up shop in KL. These young professional KL-ites are exactly their main target audience: those who equate success to being culturally aware and value taste level as highly as their bank accounts.

Fuman Art Gallery acts as an agent to artists, representing them with talks to buyers and museums, helping raise funds to commission work, and even handling the marketing and sales. Similar to hosting artists in residence, their partnerships with real-life companies has seen successful creative collaborations such as the Lamborghini collaboration, who hosted Argentinian artist Gustavo Charif in Kuala Lumpur for a month. Such commercial promotion might draw criticism on the artist’s ability to exercise full creative control. “People do argue that constraints are not good for artists’ creativity, but look at French poems; there’re so many constraints within French poems, but it’s still so beautiful,” defended Fremon, who reckons that it also promotes an environment of working with others and not just alone, a concept fairly foreign for most artists.

Criticism aside, the hard work seems to be paying off, as they are starting to attract the attention of the local mature art crowd who has until now only been actively involved with local artists. “There is this one collector who started off buying local artist Noor Azizan Rahman Paimans’s artwork and are now starting to explore our Japanese artist’s work,” Khoo noted proudly of the mini triumph.

Another triumphant feat is the organization of Stephane Blanquet’s exhibition at the Singapore Art Museum in 2013, which generated a huge turnout and tremendous interest. The artist filled 250 square metres of space with life-size fixtures, furniture, illustrations, and even curating the music, successfully created a multimedia experience that transcended a two-dimensional exhibition.

Following the success of this project, Fuman is thinking big – an expansion to Paris, the epicenter of art and culture. Fremon’s interest in art started when he was a young teenager in France collecting and dealing with art and books.The opening of Fuman Paris would be like a homecoming of sorts. While the gallery in KL might have the existential dilemma of growing its audience, the Parisian counterpart might be exempt from this conundrum, as Fuman Art Gallery in Paris will focus on ’60s and ’70s Japanese art. “For a mature art market like Paris, we are going about things with a different approach and targeting a focused market,” Fremon said with a clear intention to craft a niche market in the big bad Parisian art world.Will Malaysia’s Fuman Art Gallery be successful in capturing an overlapping slice of the City of Light’s art offerings?We truly believe so.

Source: Senses of Malaysia July/August 2014

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