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IF I TOUCH YOU, WILL YOU MELT?
Wong Ken Fuan’s designs in fused glass are not only beautiful objects but they also seem to have captured traces of spirituality in their form. A Malaysian artist whose studio is based in Penang, Fuan has been working in glass since 1985 and was largely self-taught. He was born in 1959, the fourth generation of immigrant Chinese to Malaysia. Fuan spent two years in England, visiting museums, art galleries, the great English homes and their gardens, and it was during this time he was introduced to the works of Carl Gustav Jung, whose philosophy has influenced his life and work at a very deep level. Certain aspects of Buddhism and the mystic components of Christianity and Sufism have also had a deep impact on his work.
Fused glass has a history that dates back to the Egyptian and Roman cultures from around 2000 B.C. The use of this process fell into abeyance and only reappeared with any significance around 1935, through the efforts of a small group of artists in Czechoslovakia and a little later in the United States. Using heat and gravity, pieces of glass are cut to shape and placed over moulds, then fired in a kiln. Various oxides and coloring agents are used, melting either within or on the surface of the glass.
Unlike the technique of stained glass, which treats the lead line as a primary element of its design and forces a more mechanistic and intellectual approach; the fused glass technique allows a more emotional and spontaneous response. This satisfies the part of Fuan that had been brought out by his past training in the Chinese “Hsieh-Yi” style of painting, where great emphasis is placed on the spontaneous application of ink and color on rice paper. This style parallels fused glass, as the artist has to understand and master the various firing schedules and chemical compositions of different glass and the results that different degrees of heat give to the different oxides used to color glass. These disparate elements are then combined and the kiln finishes the work off by using heat, time and gravity.
Wong Ken Fuan resides in Penang, an island north of Malaysia. He finds the proximity of nature, the colonial architecture and the generally idyllic pace of life very conducive to his artistic sensibilities. His clients include churches, banks, hotels and some corporations as well as art collectors, architects,and other artists.
In his spare time, the artist travels, scuba dives and tends to his cockatoo, his plants and his twelve cats.
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