GELAGAT by ROHAIZAD SHAARI

Recently, I was asked to shoot a portrait of one of a few Malaysian watercolor artist, Rohaizad Shaari for his upcoming solo exhibition GELAGAT. I was pleased to do it and came up with outrageous idea in my head that happened to be a crap.

Rohaizad is a simple man and great watercolor artist. He has been making his living by doing watercolor paintings. His subject are mainly landscape of a Malaysian village with his favorite 'gerek' or an 'old bicycle' appeared in nearly every of his paintings. This is a continuance from his first solo exhibition, GEREK (2003), which was more of a reflection of his village life (living in Kedah), apparently became a huge success.

Bebanan
(2006)

With much and rapid 'happenings' in recent years, he couldn't turn away from being affected. In his recent paintings, he has injected his idea of contradiction that has been taken over his surroundings. With an old bicycle again as the main character in his works, the landscape has changed. Social criticism arise obviously as the new environment interjects. But he remains simple. We can see it in the title of his works. Mostly 1 word, the rest of it 2 words.

Krisis
(2008)

Enough of him, lets talk about me. Why did i said my outrageous idea turns into crap?

Most of his paintings are large scale watercolor. Nearly 2 meter width. So I think it would be cool if I can take a picture of him holding a mop soaked in rose syrup getting ready to bash his large paintings. Right? Right?!! wrong.... So I just took a low-key portrait of him for presumably his catalogue cover which end up in the inner page. It looks cool.

Anyway back to him...

Be sure you be there to check out Rohaizad's recent large scale watercolor paintings.
The details are as follows:

Date: 15th August 2009(Sat) | 5pm
Venue: Metro Fine Art, Legend Hotel (The Mall)
Exhibition runs until 29th August 2009