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Jade Lee-Duffy

OLAF MOOIJ  GIVES the grey Renault Clio a good looking over - then whips out a hairbrush and sets to work on the wavy strands of the car's massive orange wig.

Rotterdam-based Mooij is in Hong Kong to open his first Asian exhibition, HairCar - a collection of five  cars  and 30  1:18 scale models, most of them bedecked with absurd wigs.  Two of the cars and their wigs were shipped from the Netherlands; the others were created here.

The Exhibition, at Festival Walk, runs until March 5. Mooij says he assesses each car's personality - its style, year and colour - then comes up with a  suitable hairpiece.  The HairCars are fully licensed and ready to hit the road.

The wig on the Renault Clio  has a wild streak with a punky spike up the centre. Mooji says its chemical-orange colour was inspired by the black-dyed hair sported by some Asian teenagers.

Next to it, a red Japanese Daihatsu  has been styled with a big black bob - which is a cross between the looks of a Japanese schoolgirl and a sumo wrestler.

Mooij   says he got the idea of cars having a personality from his father, who treated the family car as if it was a person.    Whenever they reached a destination, he would pat it and say: 'Well-done'.

The HairCars have been exhibited around the world at the likes of the Leo Kamen Gallery  in Toronto and the New York Design Room in New York.

Mooij's first car was the 1999 DJ Mobile (on display at Festival Walk), a Ford Sierra transformed into a mobile  boom box and DJ station. The rear is mounted with  12 speakers, resembling jet engines and with a sonic boom to match. Using wood and poly resin, Mooij built the speakers into the car, creating an explosive shape.

'It was inspired by Faithless' song, God is a DJ, and the Popemobile,' says Mooij. 'I put these two things together and I can drive around from party to party playing music.' Mooij rents out the car to DJs and for promotions. In 1999, it was nominated for the Design Prize of Rotterdam.

Last December, the director of the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen  in Rotterdam  bought Mooij's Chesterfield Car,  which is fitted with an exterior of a brown leather sofa and soft padding.  It's usually parked  in a room of surrealist art, including Salvador Dali's Mae West Lips Sofa and Rene Magritte paintings.

Mooij  says his creations  will  change the way people  view cars.

'People can connect to the art because there isn't much to explain,' says Dominique Perregaux of Art Statements Gallery, who helped organise the show. 'They'll understand it's a car and it's a haircut. It's unique and fun, with no sense of deja vu.'

Mooij has worked with traditional materials, but you won't catch  him chipping away at marble or moulding  clay. 'I prefer to do free works, so  you're thinking from the ideas and not the materials.'

Born in Rotterdam in 1958, Mooij graduated from the Akademi van Beeldende Kunsten Rotterdam (Academy of Arts of the City of Rotterdam) in sculpture. 'In those days, sculpture was  liberal,' he says. 'You could do anything.  The idea is what they tried to teach you.'

One of Mooij's sculptural projects at school was creating a curtain of sound. He hung old  speakers from the ceiling on wires. As  people walked through this curtain of big and small speakers, the sounds would vary. 'It was sculpture  on a very wide plane,' he says. 'The sound curtain was about hearing sounds so  you were disorientated.'

Mooij says he enjoys playing with people's emotions - be they fear or disorientation. Another  of his works involved a room with two doors. When someone entered, the lights would go out and the space would be dimly  lit by a line of lights.  When people wanted to leave, they would reach for the door - but it wouldn't be where they thought, because Mooij had  aligned the lights 15 degrees off centre.

Mooij says he likes to bring his art to people, and regularly drives his HairCars around Rotterdam (although not on the motorways).

Before the car series, Mooij  was intrigued by bicycles. He altered two-wheelers, giving some eight handlebars, one on top of each other. He fitted others with five seats in an  arc.

'When you're riding a bike with eight handlebars, it looks different,' says Ellen Dijkstra, an artist and Mooij's partner of 25 years. 'People will look and think, 'What's that?' [Which makes] you have contact with people you normally wouldn't.'

Mooij says that by the time he's 70 he wants to have 20 cars and store them in a museum-like space. 'It's also possible that I never make another car again,' he says. 'It's so difficult to say. It can always change. Sometimes you're inspired by something you've never seen.'

HairCars by Olaf Mooij, Level LG2, Festival Walk, 80 Tat Chee Ave, Kowloon Tong.  Inquiries: 2844 2222. Ends Mar 5



Hair apparent