{"id":5013,"date":"2015-07-18T16:23:47","date_gmt":"2015-07-18T08:23:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/weiling-gallery.com\/gallery\/?post_type=portfolio&p=5013"},"modified":"2015-07-18T16:23:47","modified_gmt":"2015-07-18T08:23:47","slug":"art-of-feng-shui-by-elaine-lau","status":"publish","type":"portfolio","link":"https:\/\/dev08.mm-sb.com\/web04\/portfolio-item\/art-of-feng-shui-by-elaine-lau\/","title":{"rendered":"Art of Feng Shui by Elaine Lau"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The Edge, 7 February 2011
\nArt of Feng Shui
\nby Elaine Lau<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Best known for his tongue-in-cheek art, emerging artist Munkao\u2019s new series explores this ancient aesthetic system, but with a contemporary twist.<\/p>\n

Emerging artist Munkao is as eccentric as the artworks that he creates, if not more so. So it is difficult, if not impossible, to understand what lies beneath his veneer of goofiness. What is clear is that his works are attention-grabbers, not unlike his own personality.<\/p>\n

\"tfss-edge1\"<\/a>Take the paintings he did for the two-man show, Natural, at The Annexe Gallery in 2009. The artworks challenged the notion of what we know as \u201cnatural\u201d \u2014 wolves were given human legs and clad in football socks and boots, and instead of a swishy tail on a goldfish were fishnet stocking-clad legs.<\/p>\n

Then in the 2010 series, Diaspora Anxiety, Munkao cleverly uses elements from pop culture such as Star Wars characters C3P0, R2D2 and chubaka, and others like Ultraman to comment on Asia\u2019s changing geopolitical realities. Munkao is also a member of The Best Art Show in the Univers art collective, which is known for its highly original, funny and satirical art projects.<\/p>\n

Tongue-in-cheek humour undergirds this 29-year-old\u2019s artistic language and once you meet him, you will see why \u2014 just as many of his works have an element of irreverence to them, so does he. His flippant facetiousness is at times charming, but at others, downright annoying.<\/p>\n

For instance, any attempt to extract information on his background and how he came to pursue art is met with comments like, \u201cFocus on the present la, don\u2019t talk about the past \u2014 so boring.\u201d<\/p>\n

And all this said with a cheeky grin, which was present on his face throughout the interview. The little that I did manage to find out about him? His passions are drawing and money \u2014 \u201cChinese family mah\u201d, he points out in reference to the latter. He spent most of his schooling years in Singapore and returned to KL to attend a local art college, which only lasted for six months, and then dabbled in business studies. \u201cYouthful rebellion,\u201d he says of that period.<\/p>\n

\"tfss-edge2\"<\/a>The \u201cpresent\u201d that Munkao refers to is his debut solo exhibition, Feng Shui, which will be on view at Wei Ling Gallery from Feb 10. The 13 works of \u201cpainstallations\u201d, prosperity sculptures and neo-auspicious landscapes showcase Munkao\u2019s illustrative and conceptual prowess in creating emotionally stirring and aesthetically pleasing works of art that draw upon the popular repertoire of Chinese symbolism \u2014 numbers, animals and landscapes. The show will be curated by feng shui master Chang Kim Hua of TDR Geomancy Sdn Bhd.<\/p>\n

Munkao offers this tidbit on why he chose to explore this subject matter, claiming that his life had been dictated by feng shui. \u201cWhen I was eight, a feng shui fortune teller told me I would be an artist,\u201d he says. \u201cThis series pays homage to that feng shui fortune teller. This is also a result of an eight-year residency programme with my parents. I learnt a lot of things from them about feng shui.\u201d<\/p>\n

Munkao talks about what he found interesting in his research on feng shui. \u201cThere\u2019s this part where it says you\u2019ll feel like it as long as you feel right. There\u2019s this whole idea about something placed in a way, say, a chair with its angles pointed at you, and you don\u2019t feel good, and that\u2019s the bad thing. The point is there\u2019s an arbitrariness yet very emotional aspect, and there\u2019s this set of rules and guidelines. I try to go with that, along with the inspiration from iconographies and methodologies of existing feng shui items.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"tfss-edge3\"<\/a>\u201cWhat I\u2019ve done is, for each piece I may have my concepts but what the feng shui master is going to do is look at a piece and reverse-conceptualise it \u2014 give his own concept to it. Also, he will be curating the space it will be placed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seven of the works are \u201cpainstallations\u201d \u2014 \u201cThey are installations that behave like paintings,\u201d says Munkao \u2014 with depictions of animals such as horses, three-legged toads, koi fish and bats. Each piece has a mechanism attached to it that enables a sort of animation, such as the eyes of the toad lighting up when someone draws near, or the fish jumping in the waterfall, or the horse galloping. Munkao created these mechanisms with another artist, chi too.<\/p>\n

Three are prosperity sculptures, one of which is a device that generates lucky numbers, run by a feng shui algorithm programme that Munkao wrote with his engineer girlfriend. The last three works are auspicious neo-landscapes, which he describes as digitally manipulated \u201cGoogle Earth Chinese landscape paintings\u201d.<\/p>\n

Munkao calls these works \u201ctech art\u201d and cites the movie Avatar as having inspired his foray into this genre, his first time doing so. His sentiments on this, his debut solo show? \u201cI feel really ecstatic about the show and, at the same time, grieved inside for the whales that are killed in Japan,\u201d he says, seemingly in all seriousness. He hopes the works will \u201chelp the Sea Shepherd in spirit … because killing whales is cruel\u201d.
\nEr, right.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","tags":[],"portfolio_entries":[5],"class_list":["post-5013","portfolio","type-portfolio","status-publish","hentry","portfolio_entries-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev08.mm-sb.com\/web04\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio\/5013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev08.mm-sb.com\/web04\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev08.mm-sb.com\/web04\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/portfolio"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev08.mm-sb.com\/web04\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev08.mm-sb.com\/web04\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio\/5013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev08.mm-sb.com\/web04\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev08.mm-sb.com\/web04\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5013"},{"taxonomy":"portfolio_entries","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev08.mm-sb.com\/web04\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio_entries?post=5013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}