LKH artWorks

Shan Hai Jing? literally translated to mean look of the Mountain and the Sea is an exhibition of wood-block prints and ink paintings of monsters by print-maker, Low Khay Hooi, developed over a period of 2 years. The prints, on rice paper and painted over with coloured-ink washes, are one-of-a-kind, single edition prints. Low takes the topographical maps of Malaysia as his starting point. He extracts shapes from these maps as found in school text-books and develops them into imaginary hybrid monsters that affect the weather, bring disease, protect or threaten the population of the area.

In this exhibition, Low presents his prints like pages from an imaginary anthropologist log-book, with each print introducing one or two of his monsters associated with a town or region in Malaysia. Accompanying the images, is Chinese text providing an explanation of the mythical significance of these fantasy creatures to their environment. The format loosely refers to that of Chinese almanacs and early anthropological texts.

For Low, these prints are a fun and enjoyable strategy for him to develop a body of imagery that will form the visual vocabulary for his future work. For the viewer, they recall a school child wild imagination at work in the form of doodles made during the long hours of boredom in the classroom.
This exhibition will be his first solo exhibition. Shan Hai Jing will be on exhibit at Reka Art Space from 24 May 2007 to 23 June 2007.