Spirit of the Studio, curated by Ong Kar Jin and Wong Jian Lin, turns the gallery into four working ateliers that flow into a common forum. Here, visitors step into recreations of each of the four architect-artist’s studios, realising the atelier as the cornerstone of creation where architects and artists alike sketch, tinker, and forge ideas into form.

Throughout history, the studio has represented more than just a place for working – the opening of workshop spaces for public viewing (such as the Atelier Brancusi in Paris), as well as recent purpose-built scenographies such as Peter Blake’s 2019 exhibition The Artist’s Studio in London, mark a realisation of the studio as an essential expression of an artist’s intents and processes. Working with the pared-down, and somewhat raw, spatial qualities of Toffee’s gallery space, the Four Sad Architects’ upcoming show is imagined as a subtle recreation of the artists’ collective and personal spaces of making.

Drawing upon the long intertwined history between architects and artists, the studio-as-exhibition highlights the intentions, inspirations, and contexts of each architect-artist, while emphasising the underlying processes which unify them: the act of painting, or mark-making, as a means of observing, understanding, and re-interpreting what lies around us.

Hijjas Kasturi is the founder of Rimbun Dahan (est. 1991 with Angela Hijjas), the name of his family home and an artist residency programme. Originally from Singapore, Hijjas moved to Malaysia in the early 1960s at the invitation of Tun Razak and the Majlis Amanah Rakyat (MARA). He has designed many iconic buildings in Malaysia, like the Tabung Haji and Telekom towers. He is influenced by many sources, and occasionally by the forest garden around his studio at Rimbun Dahan. Broad, energetic strokes flirt with ideas of abstraction and figuration through gestures to calligraphy, drawing, and flatness. Sometimes, the colours and visual effects of tropical rainforest trees, native flora, and the unforgiving sun can be discerned in his paintings.

Nic Proud is an applied artist and painter of the imagination. He received his early training in England and practiced in UAE, Australia, New Zealand, and London, before settling in Malaysia over the past three decades. His method is a combination of extended reflection and spontaneous action. Thin but deliberate layers of ink, acrylic and other mixed media are built up on paper, canvas, or wood to realise a yet-to-be-understood vision. For Proud, the method is an attempt to break away from or lose the horizon. Each layer manifests his considerations of abstraction, the urban, and legal and sovereign limits, in effect painting over and across theoretical, practical, and civic concerns to produce speculative and enfolded realities. 

Greg Dall is a trained sculptor, with a specialisation in timber. His early training was in ceramics, specifically with the pottery wheel, bronzes, and reliefs, and has received multiple state and national accolades for his work. Following advice from his high school art teacher, he expanded his artistic enquiries into bigger, human-habitable sculptures. After six years of university training in Melbourne, Australia, and over 40 years of practice with concrete, brick, water, and other materials, Dall has established his reputation, and regularly makes breakthroughs, in residential timber sculptures in the tropics between one to three storeys high. Recently, Dall has begun producing artwork that blend his expertise in three-dimensional form with a newfound interest in paint work. 

Chong Chee Ching (known as Chong C.C.) is a kampung boy from Tampin, Malaysia. His practice is deeply informed by the environmental conditions of where he grew up, especially in terms of contemporary human and non-human relationships. The principle of One Earth drives Chong’s art both in the choice of subject matter and the choice of material. Repurposed timber, recycled souvenirs, and other junk material are chosen for their past lives as crates, gifts, and personal significances and are elevated to Museological condition in his paintings. He does this through a combination of collage and overdrawing techniques and on-site staging with light.