I Nyoman Masriadi b. 1973

The painting is in good condition. The canvas is in good condition with a clear and taut surface and no retouching was detected upon examination under ultraviolet light. Paint layers are intact.
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In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Masriadi created a small series of works inspired by early to mid 20^th century B movies about mad scientists and their evil plans to rule the world. Their ambitions often centred on creating a powerful, monstrous composite creature, made from the body parts of different people or animals. This series was contemporaneous with the more well-known group of works about the incessant pursuit of physical perfection in contemporary life, caused by the unrelenting consumer messages on TV, and in print and the internet. Masriadi conveyed his criticisms through cartoon-like depictions of buffed heavy-set figures and body builders.

Masriadi's fascination with the fictional experiments of megalomaniacal scientists can be seen to be an imaginative and imaginary extrapolation of this indictment of the gym-going generation. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the pioneering science fiction horror tale written in 1817, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, was originally a warning against the excessive ambitions of modern man, who would have no qualms in perverting the natural order of things in his avaricious quest. Masriadi focuses his attention on the world of artificial options to enhance one's looks and physique through plastic surgery, liposuction, botox treatments and the like.

With Switching Roles (Lot 43) Masriadi humourously imagines the day when one can even become another person by exchanging heads and bodies. A row of seated male and female figures, comprising a woman in a striped summer dress and red heels, an astronaut in his suit and helmet on his lap and a nude woman and man, undergo their transformation in a laboratory. Their heads are all severed and, except for the female figure on the right, replaced with the head of another. The heads of the females are attached to the bodies of the male figures, and vice versa. Cryptically the time, presented erroneously as '00.20 AM' (rather than 12.20 AM) is inscribed at the lower left edge. Drips with strangely coloured liquids seem to keep the figures alive. Although the subject matter is violent and grotesque, Masriadi seems much more concerned to express humour and irreverence than the macabre, and to create deeply personal yet potent and relevant commentaries of our time.