Lost boys and girls
A dark collection of paintings by Huang Wei and Alan Oei depicting children is being held at a 'secret' exhibition venue, writes HELMI YUSOF
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WHEN you enter the room located in a secret shophouse, you will see numerous beautiful paintings of children staring directly at you. But look closer and you'll find something quite macabre about the images - a maimed arm, a broken leg, a missing mouth or a pirate eye-patch.
These are no ordinary paintings. They were done by Singapore artist Huang Wei, who was a contemporary of the Nanyang artists. His obsession with the Old Masters like Caravaggio and Velazquez, however, set him apart from his peers such as Liu Kang and Georgette Chen, who were more interested in studying the modern French iconoclasts like Matisse and Cezanne.
Huang worked as a studio photographer in the early to mid-1900s. He painted in his spare time, using photographs of children he took and transforming their images on canvas.
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