William Faulkner once said that the aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which

is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed, so that a hundred years later,
when a stranger feasts his eyes on it, it shall move again, since it is life.
AnuarDan did precisely that. “Khazanah” is a collective work emphasising on the
pending extinction of quaint Malay houses and its’ heritage.His painting are well
articulate, the houses strongly vertical and depicted in surrealistic and semi
abstract ways. Figures in his works, exquisitely nuanced, are pale shadows. He has
relayed an impending sense of foreboding, of everything being ultimately mutable.
Even the intricate and detailed works on these domiciles seem ephemeral. This very
ambiguity is profoundly disturbing. His images are imposing but never tactile, and
the colour utilised, of ‘dirty’ hues of earth-based tone succeeded in lending his
creation a sense of antiquity. These houses and its’ occupants seem deadpan, with
a surrealist charge to them. As for the other embellishments, (bicycle, foliage,
kitchenware) they all have an eerie and transparent quality to them. It is like
viewing your own house from another dimension. There is also a trace of scepticism
in his works, although he regrets the pending demise of such beautiful houses, he
seems almos distrustful that anything can be done to halt the process.This body of
work is indeed the exact opposite for this artist, who started out his carear
painting vividly coloured fruits. Encouraged by the then Director of Malaysia’s
National Art Gallery, Datuk Syed Ahmad Jamal, AnuarDan participated in
competitions with works exploring natural themes, and evolving into the abstract
medium. He has not abandoned his fruits series however. as they are popular with
hotel and locals.
This works are his way of preserving what is left of the Malay culture, when not
very far into the future, will be replaced by imprersonal and gargantuan
buildings. The next generation will never know any differenct, but thanks to
AnuarDan and other artist with similar love for culture, they have seen it that
proper documentation is done. Although these domains may one day no longer exist,
its beauty is immortalised for all to withness. His paintings are metapohors of a
pending future nothingness, of a society, which functions on logic and
practicality, where aesthetics are mere distractions and the persuit of wealth is
dominant. These are trouble times, when the sense of common grounds is compromised
and etiquette of preserving culture is lost somewhere in between.