“Campur, Tolak, Kali, Bahagi, Sama Dengan (Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide, Equals)”

In front of these drawings and in the windows were lightboxes holding five enlarged comic drawings that narrate Ise’s adventures, a collaboration between him and illustrator Ibrahim Hamid (Pak Him) since 2018. In Pak Him’s graphic novel style, the hero, sporting Ise’s signature thick-rimmed spectacles and messenger bag, thinks in northern Malay dialect—he is a local boy out in the world, seeing it on his own terms. In these, he is seen enjoying salmon and Museum of Modern Art in New York, detained at the Christchurch airport as a suspected drug designer, threatened by muggers in Barcelona, chatting to Jakarta police officers after the Malaysian football team was caught cheating in an Indonesia-Malaysia match, and enduring a fourteen-hour spinal surgical operation. 

These two series offer two perspectives of “Ise in the world.” Perhaps as a final statement, he chose to present works that document how he “operated” using interchangeable strategies, suggested by the show’s puzzle of a title. Yet, the exhibition alone felt inadequate for representing an ambitious, tireless practice that, like the irrepressible words and images of Operation Bangkok, burst from the seams of art world hierarchies and institutions, even hijacking these systems with its charm. 

It was only upon reading the accompanying publication, a special issue of sentAp! (co-founded by Ise and artist Nur Hanim Khairuddin), that this project seemed more fully realized. In it, texts by Rujoiu and BUG curator Ark Fongsmut draw a connection between Operation Bangkok and an earlier work of the same title shown at BUG during Ise’s residency. A “laboratory,” this included paraphernalia Ise collected in Bangkok, wall murals and sketches, and unused furniture from the building; visitors could touch all of the items on display, and students performed mock chemical experiments. With this association, the immersive research, material collecting, invitation to play and partake—only suggested in the verve of the Operation Bangkok drawings—were made palpable as integral elements of Ise’s artistic approach. Meanwhile, interviews with Khairuddin and others fill out the stories behind the curious artist-traveller depicted by Pak Him—his ambitions, the risks he took, the challenges he overcame, and the relationships that fed a practice built on sharing personal experiences and meaning. 

Ise’s last solo presentation, “Ghost,” was held in 2010 in an unused building in Kuala Lumpur. He made ten drawings and invited friends to speak about them. The recorded conversations were played during the show, accompanied by ten empty frames rather than the actual physical works. In sentAp! , the voices of his Superfriends created a necessary conversation with the two series of works exhibited ten years later. These drawings speak of, or for him, but he did not necessarily expect them to speak for themselves. Ise made art with others, and that requires give and take. Add, subtract, multiply, divide, equals.