To comprehend Haslin Ismail’s second solo is to look back at last year’s Rimbun Dahan artist residency exhibition in Kuang, where his larger-than-life paintings that delved into the realms of make-believe were the subject of critical acclaim. The Universiti Teknologi MARA graduate’s fascination with sci-fi and fantasy continues in ‘Transfiguration’, which showcases a grand total of 28 watercolour-on-paper efforts and ink drawings.
The psychedelic eponymous piece sees a massive tree coming to life and sprouting limbs in dramatic fashion, which reinforces Haslin’s utilisation of nature and the human anatomy in his artworks. The Terminator-like man-versus-machine paradigm also plays an integral part in ‘Dorsiventrality’, which portrays bones of a human rib cage deftly morphing into cogwheels and bolts. The local talent’s dalliance with a mechanised world may have begun as a homage to Japanese anime ‘Ghost in the Shell’, but his imposing body of work explores themes of love, family, death and existentialism as well. Wong Boon Ken