“khazanah”

William Faulkner once said that the aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed, so that a hundred years later, when a stranger feasts his eyes on it, it shall move again, since it is life. AnuarDan did precisely that. “Khazanah” is a collective work emphasising on the pending extinction of quaint Malay houses and its’ heritage.His painting are well articulate, the houses strongly vertical and depicted in surrealistic and semi abstract ways. Figures in his works, exquisitely nuanced, are pale shadows. He has relayed an impending sense of foreboding, of everything being ultimately mutable. Even the intricate and detailed works on these domiciles seem ephemeral. This very ambiguity is profoundly disturbing. His images are imposing but never tactile, and the colour utilised, of ‘dirty’ hues of earth-based tone succeeded in lending his creation a sense of antiquity. These houses and its’ occupants seem deadpan, with a surrealist charge to them. As for the other embellishments, (bicycle, foliage, kitchenware) they all have an eerie and transparent quality to them. It is like viewing your own house from another dimension. There is also a trace of scepticism in his works, although he regrets the pending demise of such beautiful houses, he seems almos distrustful that anything can be done to halt the process.This body of work is indeed the exact opposite for this artist, who started out his carear painting vividly coloured fruits. Encouraged by the then Director of Malaysia’s National Art Gallery, Datuk Syed Ahmad Jamal, AnuarDan participated in competitions with works exploring natural themes, and evolving into the abstract medium. He has not abandoned his fruits series however. as they are popular with hotel and locals. This works are his way of preserving what is left of the Malay culture, when not very far into the future, will be replaced by imprersonal and gargantuan buildings. The next generation will never know any differenct, but thanks to AnuarDan and other artist with similar love for culture, they have seen it that proper documentation is done. Although these domains may one day no longer exist, its beauty is immortalised for all to withness. His paintings are metapohors of a pending future nothingness, of a society, which functions on logic and practicality, where aesthetics are mere distractions and the persuit of wealth is dominant. These are trouble times, when the sense of common grounds is compromised and etiquette of preserving culture is lost somewhere in between.