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Playing perhaps on the Sky, Earth and Sea hierarchy, Ahmad Khalid Yusof shows a jumble of fragmented and frittered khat calligraphic tokens fused or fossilised on a civilisational seabed in this unusual work. They look grounded and leaden compared to the artist’s penchant for more levitational evocations of the Alif-Ba-Ta first alphabets of Islamic calligraphy. The immediate top band of clay orange is also of tactile quality while on top of it is a thinner layer of smooth, azure blue with whitish hues. The spatial ambiguity is off Ahmad Khalid’s formbook, but once the khat sequence is revisited, refreshed and re-ordered, then there will be the true revelations. This work was done at the tailend of Ahmad Khalid’s long teaching career at MARA Institute of Technology.

Ahmad Khalid is known as an art academician, artist and activist. He graduated from the Malayan Teachers College in Kirby, Liverpool in 1957 and attended the Specialist Teachers Training Institute in Kuala Lumpur in 1963. After the Winchester Art School (1966-69), he continued his studies at Ohio University, obtaining his MFA in 1976. He taught at MARA Institute of Technology from 1970 to 1989, retiring as Deputy Dean (Academic Affairs). He was Director of Shah Alam Art Gallery from 1991 to 1997. He served several terms as founder-president of the Malaysian Artists Association (PPM) which was established in 1979. He was appointed Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka guest writer in 1994.