Malaysian artist Zakii's latest exhibition bears fruit

"You will take a second look," says Ahmad Zakii Anwar, the Malaysian artist better known as Zakii. "They might shock, they might make you laugh … there will definitely be a reaction."

The works Zakii is referring to are the 14 still-life paintings comprising his solo exhibition "Pleasure and Pain" at Galerie Huit until May 20.

At first glance, the clean and simple images showing fruits and vegetables on a table look innocent enough, but it's their strategic and suggestive positioning that triggers a double take.

One shows a couple of bananas leaning suggestively against each other, another depicts a lemon with a sharp knife running through it. There are many showing incompatible fruit and vegetables trying to find their point of balance - a long bean desperately trying to depend on its cucumber partner; a tomato looking awkward as it leans against a pumpkin.

For Zakii, the dark underlying message in the images are metaphors for human relationships. "When we are in relationships it triggers all sorts of complicated emotions. When there is love there is hurt but these are essential to the growth of the soul and heart," says the 59-year-old artist.

"For these new works I wanted to express the emotions of human relationships, such as love, lust, desire and pain, mirrored in positions of fruits and vegetables - and how they interact with each other. But I wanted to do this in a light-hearted manner."