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With its tell-tale location tag n.y., this was done during his New York sojourn under the John D. Rockeller III fellowship. He held two exhibitions in New York in 1968 – at the Newsweek Gallery and the Galerie Internationale. But the style and forms of his abstract then were true to Charles S. Spencer’s observation about his natural Eastern gift for decoration. The London-based art critic for The New York Times wrote: “The conscious over-laying of linear definitions of the figures to such an extent that they become blurred into bulbous, almost sculptural forms, gives the impression not only of movement, but of power.” This essay was published first in the catalogue for Ib’s exhibition at the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce in December 1966, and then also for his Galerie Internationale show in April 1968. The composition centres on its centrifugal axis of twisted spiral with anomalous shapes hovering roughly in a semi-circle on top.