Roslisham Ismail is known as Ise by everyone from Berlin to Melbourne. He modestly claims to be “just an observer of whatever things happen around me,” but his art contradicts this, acting instead as a conduit for entanglements in which he manipulates reality to unveil intangible aspirations and unspoken forces. Drawings, diaries, photomontage and collage form the basis of Ise’s practice, though he uses video, installation and small-scale publishing efforts when appropriate.

The thread linking Ise’s works is his honest excavation of his own personal experience. During his international journeys he exhibits a canny eye for the absurd, which he treats with tender dignity. Broken hearts, wings, loyal pets, manga monsters, hapless heroes, airplanes, rockets and stilted poetics: his works are populated by both archetypal and more intimate symbols that form an idiosyncratic network of visual semantics. At the end of his 2006 residency at Artspace in Sydney, Ise published an untitled book that includes email correspondence with his Malaysian funders and friends; documentation and tickets for every event, meal, commute and flight; as well as witty, garrulous and sometimes hysterical collages assembled from magazines and nightclub fliers, melded with snapshots of new friends. Surprisingly heavy when held in one’s hands, the book is drawn from the pure matter of random encounter and immediately evokes the rhapsody that accumulates from turbulence and travel. The contents resist linearity, as Ise uses language to deflect didacticism and inspire conjecture.

Conversely, for an installation at Galerie Petronas in December 2007, Ise collected the lurid stickers and calling cards of illegal moneylenders found in the housing estates of Malaysian workers. Forming a wall-text that spelled out the acronym DEB, which in Malay translates into Dasar Ekonomi Baru (“New Economic Policy”), the installation displays less humor and whimsy than is customary in his work. For Ise, the personal is political, and the work laid bare the hypocrisy of modern Malaysian economic policies as they affect his community, family and friends. Responding to the rampant corruption and widening gaps between rich and poor, Ise highlights exploitation by usurers who are often connected to local authorities. Ise created a thematic link between bankruptcy and unsustainable capitalism by collaging the loan sharks’ cards into billboard-sized letters within the hermetically secure confines of Galerie Petronas, located in the shopping mall at Petronas Towers, a commercial hub far removed from the realities of the street.

Ise dubbed his home the Republic of Pandanindah, an imaginary state not found on the map. Located several train stops from central Kuala Lumpur, this destination initially appears to be an ordinary kampung like many in Selangor. However, it is also the location for the headquarters of the Parking Project, an informal residency program based in the artist’s studio and home. Though Pandanindah is the official name of the area, to evoke the spirit of hospitality and inclusiveness which Ise and his so-called “super friends” offer to guests—mostly international artists and curators in transit through Kuala Lumpur—Ise deploys the grand title of Republic. Everyone is invited to visit his worlds, both real and imagined, any way they wish.

- Alexie Glass