About the exhibition
The Back Room is pleased to announce our first show of 2026, Ecstasy, a solo exhibition by Malaysian painter Hoo Kiew Hang 胡久汉. The exhibition marks Hoo’s return to the local art scene following a nearly decade-long hiatus that began in 2017.
Since his graduation from Dasein Academy of Art in 2006, Hang has participated in residencies and exhibitions locally and abroad, including a solo exhibition at White Box, Publika, in 2013. But since 2017, he has been on a hiatus from exhibiting in order to pursue job opportunities as a professional set-painter on theme parks around the world. The pause in his exhibition history did not mean a pause in his art-making, however, and Ecstasy sees him returning to the art scene with a portfolio of new works that are significantly different from his paintings prior to his hiatus. Always an avid fan of the American pop art movement and pop culture generally, in the present body of work Hang has tried to release his brush from the formal coldness of pop art, and to explore pop art’s qualities through a more intuitive and expressionist style.
Colour, symbols, and cultural icons overflow in Ecstasy, which features several large works on canvas and rice paper, and a majority of small paintings on cardboard. Drawing from his memories, dreams, and pop culture, Hoo allows his subconscious to guide his hand and saturate his surfaces with fantasy faces and creatures, just as how images saturate our attention in the 21st century. But despite the chaos and layers of painting, certain stories and hints can still be registered through the glut of image and colour, rewarding the eye patient enough to see through the noise.
We invite you to join us at the opening reception of Ecstasy: A solo exhibition by Hoo Kiew Hang this January 17th (Saturday) from 3pm to 6pm. All are welcome.
Enquiries: hello@thebackroomkl.com
Artist Statement
Ecstasy takes you on a journey through the subconscious. This series of works stems from my ongoing exploration with free-style painting and subconscious symbolism. The inspiration for the characters, forms, and scenarios featured in Ecstasy arise from my dreams and the intuitive way I experienced nature when I was a child. Each painting doesn’t tell a particular story, rather they are tapestries of my emotions, memories, and fragments of the visual cultures that surround me.
Dancing artists, ecstatic monks, alien beings, vampires, spirits, bones, bats (endless bats), soaring birds, smiling and crying faces, distorted visages,.... The series for me unfolded like a visual rhapsody, in which I poured dreams, myth, and subconscious images onto the paper. It’s a chaotic narrative without a beginning or an end, rich with psychological cues and symbolism that remain a mystery even to me. Every stroke feels like a fragment of feeling, every figure an echo of a memory. The riot of colour and overlapping forms flow organically from an inner reservoir, mirroring the layered logic of dreams.
I draw inspiration from pop art, outsider art, primitive art, graffiti, and comics—forms that are outside convention and allow for a more direct expression of inner states. This entire series explores the tension between reality and the imagination, in a quest to find a spiritual outlet through artistic means.
It is my hope that these works disrupt fixed ways of reading images and invite viewers into an exploration of their own subconscious. To me, art is not just self-expression—it’s a conversation, a medium for understanding ourselves and others. This series is my mapping of a psychic landscape, and a reconstruction—perhaps even a rebirth—of cultural memory.
—Hoo Kiew Hang
About the artist
Hoo Kiew Hang 胡久汉 (b. 1982, Perak; based in Kuala Lumpur) is a painter whose practice has been heavily influenced by the American pop art movement. Hoo graduated from the Dasein Academy of Art, Kuala Lumpur, in 2006 and has since had exhibitions all over the world.
After having been on a hiatus from exhibiting (but not from art-making) over the past decade in order to pursue other professional opportunities and to raise his children, Ecstasy re-introduces Hoo to the local art scene. Previous exhibitions prior to his hiatus include the solo exhibitions Paradise of Gods (2013, White Box Publika, Kuala Lumpur) and Our Unnatural Disaster (2009, Malihom Artist-in-Residence Programme, Penang), along with group exhibitions in Nanjing, Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Manila, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. His paintings are in the collections of The AFK Collection, Rimbun Dahan, Tanjong Public Limited Company, Malihom, and the Royal Bank of Scotland (all in Malaysia) and the Beppu Art Museum (Japan).