A new exhibition featuring the work of renowned Malaysian artist Datuk Tang Hon Yin is currently captivating visitors at Suma Orientalis Fine Art in Damansara Heights. The show, titled "Horizons of Time," displays eight paintings spanning from the 1990s to the 2010s, showcasing landscapes that exist somewhere between abstract and figurative art. These works dissolve into interpretations of light, horizon, and memory as soon as viewers attempt to categorize them definitively.

The white-walled rooms of the gallery are filled with shifting fields of color that hover in an artistic limbo, neither wholly abstract nor conventionally representational. The exhibition, running until September 21, invites visitors to trace the artistic journey of a self-taught painter whose practice has steadily evolved over decades and whose work holds a unique position in Malaysian modern art.

Born in Penang in 1943, Tang's path to becoming a celebrated artist was unconventional. He graduated from Universiti Malaya in 1967 and completed a Diploma in Education the following year, with no formal art training in his early years. However, this absence of traditional artistic education became the foundation upon which he developed his distinctive visual language.

Working primarily with acrylics and an airbrush, Tang cultivated a recognizable style characterized by expansive color fields and meditative restraint. Between 1978 and 1991, he was an active member of the UTARA group, working alongside prominent figures such as Khoo Sui Hoe and Sharifah Fatimah Zubir. This period marked a critical phase in Malaysian art history, when local artists sought to establish modernist movements that moved beyond inherited colonial frameworks.

Tang's significant contribution during this era was his decision to move away from direct representation and toward the evocation of terrain, atmosphere, and temporality. His approach helped define a uniquely Malaysian artistic voice that spoke to local experiences and perspectives while engaging with international modernist traditions.

The paintings currently on display at "Horizons of Time" demonstrate these qualities with remarkable clarity. Featured works include "Water Margin 120" from 2005, "Water Margin 105" from 2002, and "Something in the Air 17" from 2004, all executed in acrylic on canvas. These pieces showcase bands of muted earth tones offset by luminous passages of light, with contours suggestive of aerial views or coastlines that emerge only to dissolve into veils of pigment.

The works maintain a unique tension between stillness and dynamism, holding contradictions in perfect suspension: solidity and fluidity, earth and sky, present moment and the passage of time. As the exhibition notes propose, "The horizon isn't simply a line dividing earth and sky, but a metaphor for passage between decades, between places, and between states of being."

In Tang's artistic interpretation, the horizon becomes less a fixed boundary and more a threshold – an opening that invites contemplation of how memory stretches across space and how perception shifts as one moves through life. This sensitivity to atmosphere and emotional resonance has made Tang's paintings widely appreciated both domestically and internationally.

The artist's works have been acquired by major institutions including the National Art Gallery Malaysia, Bank Negara Malaysia, Galeri Petronas, and the Penang State Art Gallery, which dedicated a comprehensive retrospective to him in 2018. His paintings also reside in corporate and international collections, reaching as far as Belgium and Singapore, demonstrating the universal appeal of his artistic vision.

Viewers frequently comment on the meditative quality of Tang's paintings, which can suggest bird's-eye views of earth or sea while simultaneously evoking states of tranquility and reflection. To some observers, they represent physical terrains; to others, they embody states of mind and emotional landscapes. Tang himself has long expressed an artistic vision shaped by optimism and hope, filtering the world's turbulence through an aesthetic approach that is both grounded in reality and expansively imaginative.

The exhibition at Suma Orientalis Fine Art aligns with the gallery's broader mission to nurture meaningful conversations around contemporary Malaysian art. Based in Damansara Heights, Suma Orientalis is recognized for its comprehensive programming that includes exhibitions, artist talks, and critique sessions, with a particular focus on artists whose practices demonstrate both depth and contemporary relevance.

By presenting Tang's works within this curatorial context, the gallery emphasizes his continued significance in the evolving narrative of local art and his influence on younger generations of Malaysian artists. The exhibition also addresses questions that extend beyond art history, exploring themes of time, memory, and place that resonate with broader human experiences.

In Tang's layered canvases, time itself appears to breathe and flow. Colors sediment like geological strata, recalling deep time and natural processes, while shifting tones resemble the fleeting impressions of travel – landscapes glimpsed from moving vehicles or coastlines observed from aircraft. This artistic approach stages encounters between permanence and impermanence, between what endures across time and what inevitably slips away.

For gallery visitors, standing before these works can feel like entering a liminal zone between the physical and the spiritual, the concrete and the abstract. One can search for familiar elements – suggestions of rivers, mountains, or skies – but equally, one can allow the paintings to function as mirrors for perception itself, reflecting how we see, remember, and locate ourselves in the world around us.

As Tang, now in his 80s, continues to live and work in Penang, his paintings serve as powerful reminders that artistic journeys can unfold slowly and without spectacle while still leaving an indelible mark on cultural consciousness. They also remind viewers that horizons are never truly fixed: they shift as we move through life, carrying with them the accumulated weight of history, the distinctive texture of place, and the enduring light of possibility for future generations.

The "Horizons of Time" exhibition runs until September 21 at Suma Orientalis Fine Art, located at The Five KPD, B-3a-1, Jalan Dungun, Damansara Heights, Kuala Lumpur. The gallery is open from 1 PM to 6 PM and is closed on Mondays and public holidays, providing ample opportunity for art enthusiasts to experience Tang's contemplative and transformative artistic vision.