For more than 20 years, Japan's popular public artist Mikuo Konoki has been transforming industrial scrap steel and other metal debris into sculptures that address issues of life and death: Their message is hope.

His work is widely known as "Ganda," a term in dialect for scrap iron - today it has become the name of Konoki's sculptural wizardry.

Now Konoki, whose public art has been voted No. 1 in Japan in several polls, has brought more than 20 of his latest sculptures and some oil paintings to the Shun Art Gallery at 50 Moganshan Road.

Scrap steel and other metal industrial wastes are treasures for Konoki who has a workshop-studio in Chiba Province in eastern Japan. "I love steel, the color is raw and beautiful," the 70-year-old artist says.

Konoki buys all his raw materials from a local metal-recycling center, and turns them into sculptures that mostly take the form of cute birds, dogs or human figures - simple, abstract and captivating.

His recent paintings have a strong cartoon element, such as a black cat. It reveals a romantic, deep-seated childhood fascination. In an interesting series of paintings of simple shapes - round, triangular and square - he interprets Japanese Buddhism.

Konoki is gifted in many fields, including sculpture, oil and glass painting and graphic arts. He owns two private galleries, one in the Ginza in Tokyo and one in Chiba.

His most famous oil painting, "Reborn," is about hope.

The youthful-looking artist was once seriously ill during the 1970s, when Japan was in economic turmoil. His will to live inspired him to paint the 6.2-meter-long and 2.2-meter-wide work in which rays of sunshine pierce dark clouds and illuminate plants and little purple daisies. A tiny red flower in the right corner of the painting represents the artist himself.

"I saw vitality in the corner," Konoki says. "Human beings are vulnerable, but we can find hope."