The
need to create, the need to communicate and to use our imagination is
in all of us – the young artist Pua Zhe Xuan is no exception.
Pua Zhe Xuan was born with autism. According to Kid’s health
(America) - Autism causes children to experience the world differently
from the way most other children do. It's hard for children with autism
to talk with other people and express themselves using words. Children
who have autism usually keep to themselves and many cannot communicate
without special help.
Pua
Zhe Xuan has developed skills in communication which are fresh for him
and exciting for us. He has taken to making images to help him
communicate his thoughts and feelings to the outside world. Over time,
he has built up a portfolio of stunning imagery to tell his personal
story and to reflect his thoughts and feelings about the world around
him. Art has truly become a language for Pua Zhe Xuan, giving him a
connection to a world he was born disconnected from.
As
he has developed his artistic skills, Pua Zhe Xuan has been able to
render complex patterns and eventually produce works of art worthy of
notable artists such as the Swiss ‘Outsider’ artist Adolf Wölfli.
Outsider art is that which is created outside the boundaries of the
official art culture, and has included many fascinating artists and
their work. Many of Pua Zhe Xuan’s images also resemble ‘naive’ artworks
from places such as Haiti and more specifically the works of Hector
Hyppolite, or the paintings of Frenchman Henri Rousseau (Le Douanier or
the customs officer).
Within
Pua Zhe Xuan’s paintings there is often an unwitting comic element,
such as cute overweight birds that should never fly – but do. They leap
and fly from the boy’s imagination into our own. It is there they nest
and nurse remarkable eggs of creativity. The boy’s unique artistic
freedom captures our imaginations, helps us to fly, and enables us to
imagine impossible but glorious worlds of his heart, and of his gentle
spirit.
In
those drawings by Pua Zhe Xuan, smiling lions and/or moustachioed
tigers stand transfixed, as if spotted by an all too obvious camera, and
pose. The comic nature comes from the all too human expressions on the
animal faces. It is as if Aardman studios are in mid-capture of some
comic animation, and the boy acting as their cell painter. But it is not
a studio break, there is no studio and the boy reveals himself as the
champion of his personal dilemma by communicating so precisely and so
floridly to a multiple audience who clamber to see his slightly humorous
works.
There
are times when a doting parent guides his eager hand, but mostly Pua
Zhe Xuan is resolutely his own person. Like any artist aware of his own
mind, Pua Zhe Xuan shrugs off guidance in favour of a mind free to
travel into unknown, and possibly unknowable, worlds. Like Wölfli or
French naive artist Séraphine Louis, amazing floral themes re-occur
within his unimaginable forests. Sometimes they dance like Heinz
Edelmann’s cartoon illustrations for The Beatles ‘Yellow Submarine’. At
other times Chinese lanterns and trees sway to an unheard, but
universal, rhythm knowable only to the boy - Pua Zhe Xuan himself. Ferns
and expressive leaves remind us of both Séraphine and of Hyppolite,
their closeness to nature and the brightness of their imaginations. Pua
Zhe Xuan blesses us with his visions of a warm, comfortable nature where
the worst thing that can happen is we split our sides laughing at
butterflies and dragonflies, which are far too plump, or having our ribs
tickled by those comic cats.
Over
a few years, aided by one enlightened teacher Pua Zhe Xuan has grown and acquired unique
skills and boundless imagination to create his formidable imagery. There
is little doubt that, as time slides forward, the boy Pua Zhe Xuan will
become a remarkable young man who will delight in taking his audiences
on spectacular visual rides. This is but the beginning of an incredible
career in art. Already Pua Zhe Xuan has exhibited in Kuala Lumpur and
journeyed to Cambodia
can also be read in Dusun 5
As
he has developed his artistic skills, Pua Zhe Xuan has been able to
render complex patterns and eventually produce works of art worthy of
notable artists such as the Swiss ‘Outsider’ artist Adolf Wölfli.
Outsider art is that which is created outside the boundaries of the
official art culture, and has included many fascinating artists and
their work. Many of Pua Zhe Xuan’s images also resemble ‘naive’ artworks
from places such as Haiti and more specifically the works of Hector
Hyppolite, or the paintings of Frenchman Henri Rousseau (Le Douanier or
the customs officer). 
