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      ink on paper, 19 x 13.5 cm

Orifices And Innards From Mars
By Gnute
written for catalogue of "Fei--A Solo Exhibition" (2003), drawings by Liew Kwai Fei.
 

This is Major Tom to Ground Control
I'm stepping through the door
And I'm floating in a most peculiar way
And the stars look very different today

If a biologist were sent to Mars to report on the life forms he observed there, his specimen studies would look something like Liew Kwaifei’s drawings: Martian innards, hybridized animals, degenerate animals, spores, exotic plants, even cross-breeds of mexican hats and baseballs. Not to mention orifices that stare at you and suck you in.

There is a strong Rorschach-like quality to Liew’s drawings. Rather than dictate meaning, he sets up a theatre of the strange, the curious, and the grotesque, then lets us determine for ourselves the meaning of the artwork. Instead of our random thoughts cohering around an object and taking on weight, the inverse happens: Liew’s subjects are the random objects to which our thoughts suction on to. In addition, the fact that we have to navigate our way around the exhibition space in order to see the artwork helps us create our own order out of the seeming chaos in the work.

Speaking of suction, let’s talk about the orifices that feature a lot in this body of work. Yes, orifices that grow out of arms and heads and plant life. Such are the creatures in Liew’s weird universe. We feel uneasy when we look at these genital-like beings because they are displaced from their normal context and thrown into a strange setting. Furthermore, the coloured drawings of faces are not actually faces, but they seem to be genitalia that resemble human faces. It reminds me of Magritte’s The Rape, an almost violent distortion of the human body.

  colour pencil on paper, 13.6 x 9.3 cm

Orifices are ambiguous things in their own right; all at once they are openings and closings, entry and exit points. They represent the middle area between the internal and external. Similarly, these drawings toe the line between the emotive (internal) and the analytically descriptive (external). Are we looking at coldly illustrated specimens, or images that express the unconscious through the electricity of line?

A certain element of attraction and repulsion is at work here. The tactility, varying textures and interesting compositions draw us in; while the motifs of genitalia and bacteria repel us.

For here
Am I sitting in a tin can
Far above the world
Planet Earth is blue
And there's nothing I can do

Finally, themes of the familiar and the alien pervade these drawings. From Liew’s fertile imagination comes foreign-looking creatures. At the same time, they remind us of objects we have seen before. In a sense, we are looking at planet Earth but from a totally new perspective, or perhaps we are looking at planet Mars and seeing echoes of life on earth. A sense of isolation and anxiety arises out of the tension of hovering between these two worlds…

Ground Control to Major Tom
Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you…*
 
 
 
 
 

* Lyrics from Space Oddity, by David Bowie