Stares and escalators: this could be more than a passing face

Haunting paintings of faces stare at the escalator traffic from the Chouinard Gallery, on Prince's Terrace. Entang Wiharso's red-lipped, white-masked Smiling At Us seems eerie at the centre of a gloomy, still-life set of dusty wooden objects. Meanwhile, the featureless faces of ancient courtiers accompany the equally blank faces of modern-day mainlanders in Deng Xiaohong's Manual Labour.

These two paintings are different in colour and medium, but share a common focus at the gallery's 'Faces' exhibition, where the works of eight Asian artists are being shown alongside those of mainland-based Argentinian photographer Diego Azubel, who portrays families living in the shadow of the Great Wall.

Jakarta-based Wiharso says the faces in his works are inspired by wooden shadow puppets of his native Indonesia.

'In this kind of puppetry, the faces' different shapes and colours have different symbolic meanings,' he says. The artist says his clown face 'is a cynical look at the way Indonesians act in social situations, and how hard it is to guess what is hidden behind their facial expressions'. Wiharso's faces are interesting because they explore the cultural differences between the east (where 'giving face' is everything) and the relatively more straightforward west.

The artist gives a personal example. 'My wife is American and has problems understanding how to guess or interpret if someone is really smiling, or just basi-basi, which is sort of like a smiling, empty expression used because, in Indonesia, it's not polite to say no directly or express disagreement,' he says.

But what can be made of the dead stares in the blank Self Portrait II, a monochromatic green oil painting by Le Thiet Cuong, one of Vietnam's best-known contemporary painters, or the drab greys, muted beiges and olive green of Deng's featureless oils?

'People have often misinterpreted these as the facelessness of communism,' says gallery manager and exhibition curator Elsie Fung. 'But Deng himself says his blank faces are a symbol of community - a positive unity.'