Feng Shui – A Solo Exhibition by Mun Kao @ Wei-Ling Gallery

By Ben Liew  •  in Reports
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After combining human athletes with wild animals almost 2 years ago in his Natural series, bizarre pop artist Mun Kao hits us back with more subliminal works. This time around, the talented and humourous one takes on the art of Feng Shui. A result, according to him, of an 8 year residency with his parents.

Mun Kao’s art has always been provocative. But Feng Shui shows a lighter side of the artist, and like the real thing, we left with feelings of well-being, warmth and happiness, partially due to MK getting a real life Feng Shui Master to arrange the positioning of all his artworks. Fo’ real!

In a recent interview with JUICE, MK explained, “These are paintings that have the characteristics of an installation, but effectively act like a painting. They travel without moving.” Hence, these painstallations as he likes to call them, came in all weird forms. In what he defines as tech-art, his auspicious paintings were pimped up with motors, LED lights, and one was even rigged to a bicycle – emitting the sound of horses galloping, water running and making the eyeballs of painted toads and bats glow and fade out. Ho yeah!

Apart from that, aerial shots of Genting Highlands, Putrajaya and Desa Park City from Google Earth made up his Auspicious Neo-Landscape section. It also gave a total-WTF? feeling and was closest to MK’s signature quirk. We can’t really tell if it’s meant to be taken seriously, but hey, that’s art right?

Our favourite piece, entitled Time To Get Rich, was on the second floor of the quaint and rustic Wei Ling Gallery. TTGR was basically a wall piece that dispensed 4 lucky digits at random when a red button was pressed. Genius. And with his works going from RM4k to RM16k this time around, let’s hope ol’ Mun Kao will make a leap of success like never before in the Year of the Rabbit.

Feng Shui – A Solo Exhibition by Mun Kao opened on 17 February, and will run until 3 March 2011, from 12noon to 6pm at Wei Ling Gallery. More info at www.weiling-gallery.com. For more of Mun Kao’s art, checkout www.munkao.com. And for more Feng Shui pixies, head to our gallery.

Image Wei-Ling Gallery