A neon sign which at first lights “Bada” then “Boom” then both words written with bi-colour neon tubes housed on stainless steel which refracts the pulsing yellow and orange hues simulates street signs and other consumer culture advertising gimmicks in wide use of during the 50’s and thereafter. “Bada Boom”is a silent work, while the words themselves were popular dub terms in early blues, ska and reggae, later absorbed into jazz and popular folk. Immediately recognizable, two words of simple phonetic structure which have since permeated global culture from their first audible mention, yet whose source remains forgotten, are here painted in light. The separation from their original context (sound) to that of a visual creation calls into question to what extent and as to how we relate simple terms, whether popular or obscure. Diverse cultures use radically different phonetics when our cultures discern the need for the creation of unintelligible word/sounds to mimic animals, as an example. Onomatopoeia, reminiscent of artistic directions assumed by Roy Lichtenstein with "Whaam!", 1963 …if we disassociate terms from the audible experience and paint them in light upon a metallic billboard, would we find them recognizable? Liu Dao creates a work which abandons context towards challenging our psychological imperatives of consumerist and popular culture. What, in fact, has no specific visual meaning may infer the nonsensical in language or oral communication. The rift is perhaps cultural, yet not exclusively. This work confronts our unconscious acceptance of linguistic/symbolic/visual forms as it grafts a phrase derivative of one temporally obscured source and places it in a silent suspension on a gallery wall. Bada Boom seeks to explode meaning: literally, synesthesia- we see the sound and hear the colour, a unique phenomena bordering the paranormal. [Rajath Suri]