Dr. Chew Teng Beng – mini retrospective exhibition

Date: 13 July 2014, Sunday
Time: 12.00 p.m. to 3.00 p.m. (Tea Reception)

Our gallery will be hosting Dr. Chew Teng Beng Mini Retrospective Exhibition from 1st July to 27th July 2014 ( viewing by appointment only)
Dr. Tan and I would be most grateful if you will please help us to share and pass this on to your art lovers & friends.

Dr. Chew Teng Beng, a pioneering Malaysian abstract artist will exhibit more than 40 paintings which he painted from 1960 to 2013. This mini retrospective allows us to see how his works have evolved over a period of 53 years, truly an amazing accomplishment to show some of the best works of Dr. Chew Teng Beng in a show. A lifetime of continuous research and experimentation has resulted in a body of works that are creative, magnificent and aesthetic. Attached is the E-Book for you to view and enjoy some of his best works which are for sale. We are still in the process of publishing the book Dr. Chew Teng Beng: Mini Retrospective 1960-2013 and if you wish to select and purchase any of his works, your name will be credited into this book as “Collection of .xxx”. The closing date for the publishing and printing of this eBook is 20th June 2014. For a limited time only, we are now giving you 25% DISCOUNTS if you wish to confirm your purchases before 20 June 2014.

Dr. Chew Teng Beng is a very outstanding Malaysian artist and is among the top echelons of Malaysian artist. He is definitely one of our highly regarded veterans in our Malaysian art world and is already very well-known in the art scene in USA, especially New York. We hope to promote Dr. Chew to as many art lovers and art collectors in this region as much credit is due to him for his contributions towards art in Malaysia.

Below are some of his incredible accomplishments:
(Adapted from Penang Monthly / February 26, 2012 By Ooi Kok Chuen)

A coveted Fulbright-Hays scholarship that he won enabled Dr. Chew Teng Beng to take up art studies at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan in 1967-1968. He managed to get the departmental scholarships at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor to pursue his Bachelor of Fine Arts (1968-1969) and then his Masters (1969-1970), both of which he astonishingly completed in a year each. A Teaching Fellowship allowed him to lecture in life drawing and printmaking at the same university.

It was a dream start for an Asian to have excelled academically and to have his art instantly appreciated in an art-sophisticated society. He even won the major prize, the Paul Neal Averill Prize worth US$400, in the 1st Michigan Bloomfield Art Association juried art contest, besting some 700 entries, in 1968 ! His love affair with the US also extended to a PhD stint at New York University from 1983-1986.

His last job as an academician was as chief executive officer at the Putra National College in Penang in 1999. In 2000, he was given his own Retrospective by the PSAG, celebrating 45 years of art-making. He also helped shape the arts and cultural direction in his various capacities such as chairman of the Co-Curriculum Programme on Culture (1989-1991), and member of the National Advisory Council on Culture (1980-1982, 1989-1990) and its chairman (Visual Art and Craft Committee) in 1980-1982.

In 1973-1976 and 1991-1998, he sat on the board of the Penang State Museum, as member, Vice-Chairman and selection Chairman. He also headed the Penang Watercolour Society in 1999-2000.

A few major personal milestones were when he won the British Council Visitorship Award in 1975 and the Australian Cultural Award, the first for a Malaysian, in 1978. In recent years, Teng Beng has re-infused his “water bubble” textural repertoire into his works, as they get more spiritual and therapeutic rather than mimetic or lodged in specific natural scenarios. .

At 74, Teng Beng displays a sharpness and sensitivity of eye and mind, with an apothecary’s skill in the quaint alchemy of colours that blends West and East, bifurcating his fleeting rhapsodised moments in New York and Penang, and in the exotic places he keeps visiting in between.