When artists traditionally depict nature, they paint great natural landscapes,
producing canvas celebrating nature in its opulence, in its abundant colors,
producing beautiful or sublime pictures of seaside, forests, mountains, which, in
Western Art History at least, would always resonate with the Biblical theme of the
Lost Paradise.
Faizal Suhif on the other hand, whose atelier is located in Hulu Langat in the
countryside, has a very different approach to nature. He focuses on the very small
things, the microscopic elements of nature one usually overlooks and magnifies
them by turning them into a big canvas. The seeds, bees, crops, mushrooms, roots,
and spiders which flourish in his imagination become the center of his Microscopia.
In “Hidup Merumpun”, for example, a mushroom originally the size of a finger
suddenly morphs into a 2-meter high canvas. It is as if the spectator would look in
a microscope and suddenly all the details of its intriguing form appear to us which
our bare eye wouldn’t be able to see
