WHAT do Italian kitchenware company Alessi, the Semiramis hotel in Athens and high-fashion brands such as Prada and Issey Miyake have in common?

The answer would be renowned designer Karim Rashid who is behind some of the quirky but eye-catching designs of these brands' products.

The New York-based artist, who was born in Egypt, now has yet another feather in his cap in his forays into product and interior design, fashion and architecture: He has come up with an artwork called Plastik Blobular Worlds.

Unveiled at the Gallery Hotel last Saturday as part of the Singapore Design Festival - the exhibition's first stop - it features five digital paintings of colourful interconnected fluid shapes and a sculpture of 250 of these blobs.

Karim, 47, says these artworks are a reflection of how he views the world: 'The twisted blobs... echo and touch on many organic issues today such as string theory, DNA, our physiological world.'

If you are an art collector, be prepared to pay a high price for his perception of the world though.

His digital paintings are going at $8,500 a pop and each artwork has a limited run of only two pieces. Each plastic blob costs $250 and the sculpture is priced at $45,000. All art pieces are still available for sale.

Karim's take is that his works will be embraced in Asia: 'I love Asia mostly for its open-mindedness of celebrating the new, the love for contemporary design, technology, and progress. But poetry, love and respect of our being and human existence are essential elements of Asian character too.

'Plastik Blobular Worlds bridges those two gaps as well with imagery of soft amorphous shapes and digital-driven landscape,' he notes.

Plastik Blobular Worlds is on at Gallery Hotel, Robertson Quay, till Jan 31. Opens 24 hours. Admission is free.