Relationships are volatile, shifting with familiarity and estrangement or just ennui. A little melodrama is created in the bathroom shown in a tilted angle and with two figures of uncertain sex, one looking straight out while unsheathing a glove, and the other stark bald and in profile as he/she recoils, the face in the mirror not betraying any emotion. The expressions, gestures and skin tones, especially of the one in the foreground, reveal something amiss, but what? There is a kind of duplicity, and it’s not just about the gender of the figures. The artist Tan Chin Kuan more inured to bare and direct commentary on socio-political equality and discrimination may have turned inwards to personal issues, having settled down in 1993. This work is featured on Page 11 in the exhibition catalogue, Tan Chin Kuan 1987-1997, at NN Gallery, Kuala Lumpur. Tan Chin Kuan first won the Minor Award in the prestigious Young Contemporary Artists (Bakat Muda Sezaman) competition in 1988, before clinching the Major Award in 1989 and 1990. He also won the Minor Award in Salon Malaysia in 1991/1992. In the 1990s, he made a huge impact in Japan and was featured in the landmark New Art From Southeast Asia in Tokyo, Fukuoka, Hiroshima and Osaka in 1992. He was in the Osaka Triennial in 1993 and 1994, as well as the 4th Asian Art Show in Fukuoka in 1994. He also took part in a symposium in Tokyo in 1991 and the Light Box Project in Fukuoka in 1995. He was selected for the 3rd Asia Pacific Triennial in Brisbane in 1999, the ARX 3 in Perth (1992), and was artist-in-residence at the Curtin University in Perth in 1992. His other highlights included the Gwangju Biennale (1995). Chin Kuan graduated from the Malaysian Institute of Art in 1987 and later taught there.