Koi Neng Liew: Play Thing

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Koi Neng Liew, "Play thing"

Public Reception with the Artist Friday Feb 3 at 7 PM

Koi Neng Liew’s large-scale sculptures have a powerfully physical presence inhabited by an elusive yet evocative sense of human spirit. In this new work he presents a meditation on childhood and fatherhood, as seen through the lens of play with his son.

Liew comments: “My son has a very different childhood than I did. He has hundreds of toys: cars, planes, guns, action figures, videos and Lego. I watch him as he imagines he is Megatron or Iron Man; he creates his own alter ego, embodying the toys we play with. Fatherhood has created an opportunity to relive my childhood. I play as though I am a child again, but realize that in my son’s eyes I am just as much a toy as the ‘play-thing’.”

Koi Neng Liew is originally from Singapore, where he studied at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. He received a BFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2001, and an MFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2005. Liew is the recipient of numerous awards including the Roswell Artist in Residence 2008 grant in New Mexico, and a 2005 Taunt Fellowship at the Archie Bray Foundation in Montana. He is a featured artist in the Clay Art International Yearbook published in Athens, Greece, and has exhibited in Canada, the United States and China over the past 10 years. In 2010 Liew undertook the year-long Artist Residency in the Medalta IAIR program and now is a faculty instructor at Medicine Hat College in Visual Communications.