Born in 1962 in Singapore, Salleh bin Japar is a conceptual multi-disciplinary artist whose work addresses concerns of identity and society, Muslim values, and globalisation. Salleh came to prominence with the seminal 1988 collaborative exhibition ‘Trimurti’, and in 2001 was a Singapore Pavilion representative at the 49th Venice Biennale.As with ‘Gunungan II’ (1989-90), the notion of the spiritual landscape is repeated in ‘Born Out of Fire’. Three huge distressed and pigmented canvases converge on a slight incline, inscribed with personalised hieroglyphs. In front of the centre panel stands a rectangular acrylic container, with a hanging bulb and an opened, partially burnt book by Castaneda. The scene presented reflects the vastness of nature that our human knowledge seeks to explain. The book refers to knowledge, limited and transient. When spiritually illuminated, human knowledge becomes bound with nature, and in turn God is found during the contemplation.
