Author: Fizen Yuen

Kong Chun Hei 鄺鎮禧

Published by Fizen Yuen

Off Beat 「踏空」 /Feyerabend /Hong Kong /Apr 1 – May 14, 2022 / As you enter art space Feyerabend, located in an old Tai Kok Tsui tong lau – a type of residential building built before the 1960s – a barber’s pole catches your attention. Its spinning action draws your eye yet lacks focus. As you continue to approach the centre of the space, the audio effects that usually come before announcements at old-style Cantonese teahouses or railway platforms blast from four mini speakers, filling the rectangular space, as if an announcement is imminent but not forthcoming. An abandoned wooden ladder and a dried up can of latex paint give the space a sense of being stuck in the past. If not for the video Sudivision playing, one might suspect that the objects were left behind from a previous occupant, instead of being part of an exhibition. I was told by the person in charge of the art space that many viewers had expected to see Kong Chun Hei’s technical pen drawings in the exhibition …

Ko Sin Tung 高倩彤

Published by Fizen Yuen

An acute manner 更尖銳的方式 / Kiang Malingue / Hong Kong / Nov 11 – Jan 15, 2022 / If something is sharp, the edge is often outward facing. For instance, sharpness can be used to describe piercing speech or sharp questions. But in changing times, when all sharpness has been blunted, how can one maintain one’s sharp edge? When the world squabbles about what to say and what can’t be said, Ko Sin Tung quietly conveyed what she considered to be a sharp edge in her solo exhibition at Kiang Malingue. Memories of the artist’s last exhibition are still fresh: for that, she turned the gallery space, in a Grade A office building in Central, into a construction site. For this new exhibition, the gallery has temporarily relocated to an old industrial building in Aberdeen. But the exhibition space inside the gallery is suffocatingly clean, and cool tones pervade the venue and the works. There are only two pieces, and Ko’s signature allusion to spaces in construction is nowhere to be found. At first glance, …

The WMA Commission Recipient Natalie Lo: Ecology is full of self-contradictions

Published by Fizen Yuen

The WYNG Media Award (WMA) is a series of non-profit making programmes developed to inspire public participation and promote awareness and discussion of social issues in Hong Kong through photography and visual arts. The theme this year is Opportunity, and the WMA Commission selected Natalie Lo Lai Lai as a recipient, commissioning her project The Days Before Silent Spring. On a superficial level, the project documented nature, and Lo’s self-styled “Half-Farming, Half-X” lifestyle, in which she uses farming as a means to personal and artistic autonomy. But visitors to her exhibition at the end of last year at the Bonacon Gallery in Guangzhou discovered more complex narratives. Lo mainly works in video. “I think essay films acknowledge my own more complicated and defensive way of thinking, with its strong synchronicity,” she says. “I use editing techniques, selective images and suggestive texts, which combine to become a vibrant response to it.” In her Guangzhou exhibition, apart from her video works, Lo cleverly adapted to the limitations of the gallery space to create an interesting installation, turning the tile pattern of the exhibition space into …