Contemporary artist Yeoh Cho Kuan is presenting a new solo exhibition that offers a personal reinterpretation of the traditional Chinese shan shui (mountain and water) landscape genre. Titled *Shan Shui As Camouflage*, the show is on display at Richard Koh Fine Art’s A Place Where gallery in Kuala Lumpur, running until October 18.
The exhibition showcases Yeoh’s latest monochromatic paintings and etchings, extending themes he has explored since 2018 in his *Streaming Mountain* series. This earlier body of work, which was featured at Art Basel Hong Kong in March 2026, employs a unique "paint streaming" technique that controls the flow of paint to evoke mountainous landscapes on large-scale multi-panel canvases. These works drew on Yeoh’s childhood memories of visits to a Taoist temple in Kota Baru, Kelantan, reflecting Chinese mythological themes such as Diyu, or the realm of the dead.
In *Shan Shui As Camouflage*, Yeoh moves toward a more intimate engagement with the subject matter. Integrating fragments of his personal history—including dismantled canvases from previous works, medical documents, and vintage books—his paintings blur the line between landscape, memory, and personal archive. This approach was partly inspired by Yeoh’s experience coping with severe gout, which forced periods of immobility and reflection. He describes the exhibition as a way of expressing acceptance of physical change and life’s unpredictability.
Alongside his paintings, Yeoh also presents a series of etchings on rice paper. These layered prints create shifting mountain forms that emphasize movement rather than precise replication, reimagining traditional printmaking techniques to convey a dynamic sense of landscape.
The exhibition includes a curated dialogue exploring the evolution of shan shui across generations. Alongside Yeoh’s work are paintings by Singaporean artist Liu Kang (1911–2004), known for blending Western and Eastern styles in the Nanyang school, and Malaysian abstract artist Cheong Laitong (1932–2022). These loans from a private collection illustrate nearly a century of artistic responses to Chinese landscape themes, highlighting the diversity of interpretation while maintaining continuity with tradition.
Yeoh, who has exhibited in Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Dubai, returns to Kuala Lumpur’s art scene with this show following his 2023 solo exhibition *What Makes A Mountain* at Eslite Spectrum bookstore. In 2022, he also participated in the Khazanah Residency Programme in London at Acme Studios.
*Shan Shui As Camouflage* is accessible to the public free of charge and offers a contemplative perspective on a classical genre, framing shan shui not only as a visual tradition but also as an intimate exploration of self and resilience. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.