Guan Wei Island Sherman Galleries Goodhope, May 9 - June 1

The predominant feature of Guan Wei's latest works is their pervasive sense of serenity. This is not the serenity of a Bonnard still life, but more that of Prozac. I found the works to be aesthetically underwhelming in a very overwhelming way. This is not to say that Wei is a bad painter - no, he is meticulous and his work carries the stamp of the perfectionist. It is merely that the works are so stylistically refined as to immure the creative process in its embryonic state.

The centrepiece of the exhibition was an installation of forty-eight canvas panels in a grid (forming one huge picture), with an island of sand and miscellaneous objects lying in front of it. The painting depicted various groups of naked figures, virtually identical in their cartoon depiction, leaving sinking boats for the dubious safety of barren, cartographically rendered islands, bearing names such as "Aspiration Island", "Trepidation Island" and "Calamity Island". At the bottom of the work sat the "Enchanted Coast", guarded by languid ravens. This almost surely is a political commentary concerning the recent asylum-seekers controversy in Australia. The paint has been handled in a manner so as to mimic printmaking techniques and is so clearly within the realm of illustration as to treat the surface and medium (acrylic on canvas) as obstacles rather than integral parts of the resultant works.

These thinly veiled metaphors and simplistic devices lack the necessary power for this type of social commentary. The installation (sculptural) component of the piece, which was set to resemble an island had, imbedded in the sand, items (shoes, a hair brush, a telephone..?), presumably belonging to the doomed passengers. Atop of this stood a television (the mainstay of contemporary installation) playing video images of waves crashing on a beach (Maroubra?). These additions, apart from creating very real problems for the cleaners post-show, had precious little to offer the paintings they shadowed.

Wei's use of these cartoon-like figures (which have become his trademark) as a pictorial panacea, and their imperviousness to emotional content, may ultimately impede the growth of his visual vocabulary, rendering him unable to ever gain the fluency to voice his ideas.

I do not wish to sound so harsh as to pass judgement on an artist on one exhibition, for if history has shown us anything it is that an artist's work is never a finite product. Guan Wei is obviously creative, for he has developed a style that is recognisably his own, I only hope he hasn't also created too small a niche in which to work.

-Richard Lamarck