A closer look at Aisha’s artwork titled 'The Love Of My Life' (acrylic, oil and oil pastels on canvas, 2024). Photo: Cult Gallery
At Tong Shin Terrace in Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur, artist Aisha Rosli is bringing her quiet, dusky world into a century-old home – a setting that feels made for her figurative paintings.
Titled Lukewarm, the exhibition features 15 works and is open to visitors on the upper floor of the old building. It is also the Singaporean painter’s first gallery showcase in Malaysia.
Presented by KL’s Cult Gallery in collaboration with Cuturi Gallery (Singapore), the exhibition (free admission) runs through Dec 11.
Aisha, 28, a graduate from Singapore’s Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, has built a practice rooted in figurative painting.
‘A feeling can be intense, yet it is often the smallest things that make you notice it. A colour, a smell, or the weather can bring back a memory,’ says Aisha. Photo: The Star/Yap Chee Hong
Her works – a mix of acrylic on canvas, watercolour, charcoal, and graphite – do not aim for realism but instead lean into mood, atmosphere and the emotional traces left behind by daily life.
“Previously my works had been angsty. My works are a bit autobiographical but not fully. It is an imagined self. The word ‘lukewarm’ came from my daily life,” says Aisha in a recent interview at the gallery.
“I always start with a very hot or a very cold drink, then while working it becomes lukewarm. I do not like lukewarm water, but I have to accept it. This exhibition is about acceptance, and not going to either extreme,” she adds.
Aisha’s painting 'Gerimis' seen at her exhibition at Tong Shin Terrace. Photo: The Star/Yap Chee Hong
In her paintings, she experiments with different mediums to create layers, translucence and depth that convey the moods she wants.
“I feel like sticking to one medium doesn’t give me this depth that I want. Every medium evokes a different response and emotion, and so it marks a particular evolution for me.
“So this one in particular, you’ll notice more blue tones, because it makes me cry,” says Aisha.
In Singapore, she has staged two solo exhibitions – Black Eye (2021) and Silence Drowns The Scream (2023) – establishing her as a distinctive voice in contemporary figurative painting in the region.
Aisha poses with her painting 'Termenung, It’s Gone Cold' at her exhibition in Kuala Lumpur. Photo: The Star/M. Irsyad
Her influences span artists like Francis Bacon, Egon Schiele, and Marlene Dumas, though she filters their intensity through a quieter, more inward-looking sensibility.
“Francis Bacon is very violent, and I realise I am drawn to that intensity. For Marlene Dumas, it is the way she removes fixed meaning from portraits. When I create, it is like solving a puzzle. I do not paint fully from personal experience, it is a mix of emotion, imagination and piecing things together,” says Aisha.
Tong Shin Terrace, with its high ceilings and versatile layout, may not be a traditional gallery, but it offers a fitting scale and presence for Aisha’s sizeable paintings.
“The space really goes with the paintings because of the colours and the feel. Aisha’s work is dreamy with small motifs and shapes. It looks different compared to a clean, white cube space,” says Cult Gallery founder Suryani Senja.
A visitor examines Aisha's fabric work, 'Because The Sky Is Blue, It Makes Me Cry'. Photo: The Star/Yap Chee Hong
In Lukewarm, the figures in Aisha’s paintings often drift in and out of focus, wrapped in blues, greys and shadowed tones that recall dream states.
“Treating her body of work as a visual diary, her latest solo show reveals a more matured artist that has blossomed deeper into herself. We are invited into fragments of (Aisha) Rosli’s lived moments as an ensemble of stripes that outline old rooms, hues of purple patterned to the rhythm of loved songs, with figures that give shape to feeling,” writes Hannah Aziz in the exhibition’s essay.
In Termenung, It’s Gone Cold and Because The Sky Is Blue, It Makes Me Cry, these gentle shadings reflect the small, everyday triggers that shape memory and emotion.
“A feeling can be intense, yet it is often the smallest things that make you notice it. A colour, a smell, or the weather can bring back a memory or stir an emotion,” says Aisha.
“It is those little moments that I try to capture in my work – the way a familiar sight or sensation can make you pause and feel,” she concludes.
Aisha Rosli’s Lukewarm is showing at Tong Shin Terrace, Bukit Bintang in Kuala Lumpur until Dec 11.
