On my way to the Night Festival last Friday, I dropped by the Lim Yew Kuan exhibition at NAFA. I wasn’t really planning to but I’m glad I did. It was one of the nicest surprises I’ve had going to an exhibition in a long time. I mean, sure, there have been shows that have piqued my interest, made me go “Hmm, interesting” or “Ooh, nice” or “Whoa… Pwoar!” or “Heh”. This actually made me smile and go, “Where the hell did that come from?” It’s amazing that Lim -- NAFA’s second principal and the son of the school’s first principal, Lim Hak Tai -- has never had any solo shows until now. He’s, like, what, 200 years old? But aside from giving props for effort, I wasn’t really expecting anything from this survey show other than the usual nudes or Nanyang School stuff. Except that there were works that seemed kind of out-of-place or even incongruous to the entire exhibition. So it was like Nanyang, Nanyang, Nanyang, then this.