KWAI FUNG HIN ART GALLERY G/F, 20 ICE HOUSE STREET, CENTRAL, HONG KONG LIU HONG WEI (Born 1965, China) Encountering a painting by Liu Hong Wei, one is often struck by an eerie sense that the children depicted in the image, although sharing the same space, never seem to fully interact with one another. Occasionally they may look at a companion, but even these rare contacts appear to lack a true interaction, a warm exchange of silent messages. Rather, the participants of each scene are either engrossed in their own individual machinations or else act as onlookers - cold and distant - observing the teeming activities of those around them. Liu emphasizes this inertness through his monotone palette as well as the geometric, flat shapes he uses to develop his composition - the chessboard floors, the perfectly rounded fruits, the straight edged block buildings. His method of painstakingly applying paint in sharp, thin jabs and short strokes of cross-hatching also adds to this static stillness. The light that washes over Liu's imaginary worlds is spectral and lends them a disturbing, uncanny charge. The titles Liu gives his canvases - Summer, Weekend, Happy Dining Table, Game at Noon - suggests rambunctious, romping scenes, yet they are solitary, desolate, almost menacing visions. In these bizarre lands of Liu's imagination the perspectives of mind and space are skewed. The paintings of Liu Hong Wei present surrealism at its most discomfiting.