‘It’s a strange, strange world we live in, Master Jack,’ so goes the refrain of a 1968 song, Master Jack, by Four Jacks And A Jill. It’s definitely a strange world to be on a beach studded with three furnace-like sand castles spewing spoke with the one on the right blasting out something to the sky. But the Lilliputian figures just saunter around oblivious to these monstrous structures on the wide expanse of the beach with the tiny strip of sea looking like a horizon. Maybe, the structures represent something fearsome, a bogeyman, lodged in his childhood memories. The sky is also getting cloudy, but whether it is meant to be ominous or just a sudden change of the weather, one never knows. Yes, it’s a strange, strange world we live in, Master Yusof Majid, the artist who is known for his wry humour and quirky situations in his paintings. This work is around the time of his Peninsular Series, his ninth solo exhibition, which was actually inspired by specific places in Malaysia. For the first 27 years of his life, the British-born Yusof Majid had been domiciled in Britain. He graduated with a BFA from The Chelsea School of Art in London in 1991, and a Master’s in 1993. He moved back to Malaysia for good in 1995, and started exhibiting first at Valentine Willie Fine Art before starting his own gallery, Darling Muse, and then Pace, which has been changed to Nadine Fine Art. But his first solo was held at the Municipal Hall in Bergerac in France.