In The Invention of Morel, a 1940 novella by Adolfo Bioy Casares, a Venezuelan writer sentenced to exile on a deserted island in the South Pacific hides from a group of tourists who arrive suddenly. Observing them daily, he becomes fascinated and begins a journal recording their doings – and starts falling in love with a young woman named Faustine, who strangely ignores him when he approaches her. Even stranger, all the intruders repeat their actions again and again, as if caught in a Groundhog Day time loop. Later, the narrator discovers that the group’s host, Morel, is a scientist, and that the visitors are projected recordings of his guests, all of them granted technological immortality. After the guests have departed, the writer, having learned to operate Morel’s machine, interpolates his image into the projection, pretending to interact with Faustine.
Installation view of Intentness and song by Samson Young at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Photo: Don Ross. Courtesy SFMOMA.
Eighty-odd years later, such plot lines may be commonplace in movies – like Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo, with its movie characters stepping off-screen and into the real world – but the idea of interacting with fictive creations through advanced technology remains appealing and seductive, especially as reality seems more and more chaotic and threatening. Intentness and songs, an installation by Hong Kong multimedia artist Samson Young at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, his first American museum exhibition, reminded me of Casares’ narrator’s search.
Young is a postmodernist conceptual artist in his mid-40s who has had an extraordinary career. After earning University of Kong Kong bachelor’s degrees in music, philosophy and gender studies; a master’s in philosophy; and a PhD in music composition from Princeton, he began working with Hong Kong multimedia artists and expanded his practice to embrace drawing, video and performance.
His sociopolitical work, which touches on racial identity, migration and border issues, includes Nocturnal Music (2015), a New York performance in which the artist, clad in military garb, sat watching video of US war on terror aerial strikes with the sound muted, adding live foley sound effects to the onscreen pyrotechnics, both bringing the audience into the violence and distancing them from it, like the controllers who do their geopolitical jobs from computers thousands of miles from their victims. In Canon (2016), based on the 1979 Vietnamese refugee crisis, Young, wearing a police uniform and standing atop a scissor lift, projected the sounds of birds’ distress calls to viewers far away with an LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device) sound cannon normally used in nonlethal but painful crowd dispersal. In 2017, Young represented Hong Kong at the 57th Annual Venice Biennale. His work has won many prestigious awards and is collected internationally.
Installation view of Intentness and song by Samson Young at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Photo: Don Ross. Courtesy SFMOMA.
For Intentness and songs, he worked with the museum’s curators Alison Guh and Karen Cheung and a technical crew of 30 designers, project managers, fabricators and installers. In this complex installation of sculptures, videos and recorded music, he focuses on the personal and domestic, displaying ephemeral objects or their 3D-printed simulacra – such as beloved books, obsolete electronic gadgets, crystals, cigarette packs, magazines and keychains – important to the artist or his partner, Tommy, on 3D-printed panels. These tabletop assemblages – which may remind viewers of Rauschenberg’s once-revolutionary “flatbed” notion of composition, an approach that positions the canvas as a flat surface where various elements can be arranged, through techniques like collage and assemblage, without the limitations of depth or perspective – rest on low rectangular plinths, each adorned with a 3D-printed hexagonal tower/speaker programmed to play choral music to AI promptings based on real-time video feeds from the gallery or Young’s Hong Kong studio. Three video monitors present an ever-changing slide-show array of numbers, photographs, snatches of conversation and graphic images scraped from the internet or fed into AI by the artist, including his Google Calendar entries and recorded interviews. The plinth displays, the videos and the computer-drawn wooden tiles below, with each tile representing a month and each row of tiles a year, are connected electronically, with their AI magic concealed. All source material dates from between 2011, when the artist met his partner, and 2023.
Installation view of Intentness and song by Samson Young at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Photo: Don Ross. Courtesy SFMOMA.
Young has claimed, self-deprecatingly, in an interview, “I am reasonably lousy at programming and 3D modelling but I have a lot of fun trying.” Viewers may be ignorant of the meanings of Young’s artefacts – although we are cognisant that the artefacts of any life can take on significance if considered metaphysically. The themes of memory, love and time receive a galvanic contemporary upgrade in Young’s songs of the self, exuberant yet elegiac, fashioned with the powerful, fun tech available now to digital-cloud netizens everywhere.
八十多年後，類似情節在電影已見怪不怪。在活地．亞倫的《戲假情真》中，電影角色從銀幕走進現實世界便是一例。然而，以先進技術與虛構作品互動的想法仍然很富吸引力，特別是現實世界越來越混亂和嚇人。香港多媒體藝術家楊嘉輝在三藩市現代藝術館的裝置作品《Intentness and songs》是他首個在美國藝術館舉行的展覽，讓我想起了卡薩雷斯筆下那位敘事者所想尋找的事物。
Installation view of Intentness and song by Samson Young at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Photo: DeWitt Cheng. Courtesy DeWitt Cheng.
在創作《Intentness and songs》時，他與博物館的策展人Alison Guh和Karen Cheung，以及由30名設計師、項目經理、製造商和安裝人員組成的技術團隊合作。複雜的裝置包括雕塑、錄像和預錄音樂元素，楊嘉輝的主題是個人和家庭，他在3D 打印的面板上展出各種稍縱即逝的物件或3D 打印的虛擬圖像，包括心愛的書籍、過時的電子產品、水晶、煙盒、雜誌和鑰匙扣，這些都是對他或其伴侶 Tommy 來說很重要的物件。桌面上的林林總總，或許會令觀眾想起勞森伯格一時無兩的創新「平板」構圖意念，這種方法視畫布為平面，以拼貼和組合技巧把各種元素排列在上，不受深度或視覺限制；這些物件放在矮身的矩形基座上，每個基座都以 3D 打印的六角形塔或揚聲器裝飾，再以程式控制裝置根據來自畫廊或楊氏香港工作室的實時錄像，按AI 提示播放合唱音樂。三個顯示屏上，是從網上擷取或由藝術家以AI輸入的數字、照片、對話片段，以不斷變化的投影片呈現，包括楊氏的Google行事曆條目和訪問錄音。基座顯示器、錄像和下方由電腦繪製的木板，每塊木板代表一個月分，每行木板代表一年，各種組件均以電子連接，把AI魔法隱藏起來。所有素材都來自 2011 年，即楊嘉輝與伴侶邂逅的一年，至2023 年。
楊氏曾於訪問中自嘲說：「我的程式設計和 3D 建模相當不濟，但從嘗試中獲得很多樂趣。」觀眾可能不知道楊氏展品的含義，儘管我們意識到從形而上學的角度來說，人生中任何物件都可以有其重要性。記憶、愛情和時間的主題在楊嘉輝各首自我歌曲中化身現代化的昇華版本，扣人心弦、華麗而不失典雅；當中所採用的有趣科技強而有力，而且是全球數碼雲端網民都可以接觸的技術。
Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Georges Mathieu, Kazuo Shiraga, Alex Katz, Robert Indiana, Fernando Botero, Manolo Valdés, Cho Sung Hee, Ron Arad, George Condo, Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, Julian Opie, Feng Xiao-Min, Pieter Obels, Li Tianbing
Art Central Hong Kong Booth C5 Central Harbourfront Mar 26 – 30, 2025
Choi Young-Wook, Ha Tae-Im, Kim Duck-Yong, Kim Hyun-Sik, Kim Keun-Tai, Woo Jong-Taek / The Korean Narrative: Layers of Korean Aesthetics / Mar 20 – May 17, 2025 / Opening: Thursday, Mar 20, 4pm – 8pm /
Soluna Fine Art G/F, 52 Sai Street Sheung Wan, Hong Kong Tuesday – Saturday, 10am – 6pm
Art Central Hong Kong Booth B3 Central Harbourfront Mar 26 – 30, 2025
Soluna Fine Art proudly presents The Korean Narrative: Layers of Korean Aesthetics, a group exhibition featuring six prominent Korean contemporary artists: Choi Young-Wook, Ha Tae-Im, Kim Duck-Yong, Kim Hyun-Sik, Kim Keun-Tai, and Woo Jong-Taek. Curated in collaboration with esteemed curator Dr. Ahn Hyun-Jung, this exhibition draws inspiration from her acclaimed book “Layers of Korean Beauty”, exploring the depth of Korean art and offers profound insights into the nation’s rich cultural tapestry. Viewers are invited to experience diverse artistic expressions that reflect timeless themes of harmony, craftsmanship, and nature, which are central to Korean aesthetics and cultural heritage.
Berliner Philharmoniker virtuoso flautist and 2025 Institute of Creativity distinguished visitor at HKBU, Egor Egorkin brings a new concept flute recital to Ping Pong Gintonería – an entire evening of classical flute x club music performance. A member of the world’s greatest orchestra, Egorkin is also an innovator in sound design and production, pioneering a new direction for the flute, through abstract textures over an ambient DJ set into a full-on lounge atmosphere. Says director, Juan Gregorio Martinez, ‘We, at Ping Pong, are delighted to welcome Egor Egorkin to Hong Kong. This programme is a rare opportunity to explore a true crossover performance from elite classical music to the dance club.’
Entering Chen Wei’s new solo exhibition at Blindspot Gallery is akin to stepping into an alternate space-time continuum. Where visitors enter, the title is displayed on a semi-transparent silver partition, illuminated by undulating waves of light that oscillate like a musical frequency. This partition functions as a threshold, inviting visitors to traverse into the world of the Chinese artist, renowned for his meticulously staged photographs and his enigmatic universe, situated between dream and reality.
Chen has conceptualised and curated the gallery space, integrating its peeling walls and concrete flooring to construct an environment reminiscent of a theatrical stage. Through the subtle interplay of light, shadow lines that echo the linear compositions of his artworks and a carefully orchestrated dialogue between colours and textures, the exhibition creates a cohesive visual and spatial experience. The artist demonstrates here that image-making is not his sole end but that he rather operates as an architect or a stage designer whose apparatus aims to question our collective sense of reality and our ability to seize it.
Installation view of Breath of Silence by Chen Wei at Blindspot Gallery, 2025. Courtesy the artist and Blindspot Gallery.
The artist has long been fascinated by the liminal space between the real and the virtual world. His photographs are entirely constructed within his studio, conceived methodically as cinematic tableaux that often verge on the absurd yet remain impeccably balanced. His compositions impart a sense of perfection so striking that it borders on the surreal. However, the objects and scenes he captures are drawn from everyday life: stacks of paper, lemons, a door handle, a man engrossed in his mobile phone – familiar elements that, once framed by the artist’s lens, detach from reality and transition into a realm of uncanny strangeness.
A significant portion of the works presented belong to the New City series, initiated in 2013. This body of work can be interpreted as a portrait of Beijing, where the artist is based, or more broadly as a reflection of any city that, like the Chinese capital, embraces rapid modernisation in an unceasing pursuit of vertical expansion and dazzling spectacle. Over time, the series has evolved, continuing to mirror the country’s social transformations as observed by Chen. More recently, his works have drawn inspiration from the Covid crisis, the growing influence of social media and the advancement of artificial intelligence.
Figures are scarcely present in Chen’s work, probably because they are crushed under the weight of unfulfilled desires and the illusion of progress or absorbed by social media and its promises of a better world. Breath of Silence (2024), the work that lends its title to the exhibition, is a large-scale nocturnal photograph depicting the silhouette of a man, backlit, hunched beneath a transparent tent. This tent, resembling an oversized, yellow-tinged rain cape, also evokes the protective coverings used during the pandemic. Anchored by large stones, it completely encloses the figure, reinforcing a sense of absolute solitude. However, the man is illuminated by the beam of a blue spotlight – a hue reminiscent of the core of a flame. Surrounding him, a yellow halo further accentuates this interplay of light. This composition generates a striking tension between the absolute stillness of the scene and the evocative palette of fire, seemingly smothered beneath the plastic shroud.
Installation view of Breath of Silence by Chen Wei at Blindspot Gallery, 2025. Courtesy the artist and Blindspot Gallery.
This tension is also evident in the three videos Light Me (2021), which open the exhibition. These moving images resemble lightboxes, so subtle are they in their motion – flickering halos of light and shadows that imperceptibly stretch, suspending time itself. Each video presents an individual entirely absorbed by a phone or computer, so captivated that their consciousness is fully immersed in the virtual realm. What is revealed to the viewer are absent bodies, positioned within a cold, blue-toned environment, while the screens burn with an icy flame.
Opposite this series of videos, the LED sculptures from Trouble City (2025) shine brightly, their multicoloured points of light twinkling in the night, drawing attention to and embellishing the structures they adorn. Like the gleaming towers that define contemporary cityscapes, they symbolise economic success, attracting workers from across the country. Yet these structures remain under construction, their scaffolding still visible. The scrolling messages they display are company slogans aimed at corporate employees, which the artist generated using ChatGPT: phrases such as “Work hard. Have fun. Make history.” or “Watch anywhere. Cancel anytime.” These pieces of text, barely discernible beneath the vibrant LED motifs, appear almost concealed. The use of artificial intelligence to generate these slogans inevitably raises questions about their authenticity, reinforcing a central theme in Chen’s work – the perpetual confusion between reality and its simulacrum.
Further, in the large photograph Tears on the Ground (2024), a solitary column stands alone, surrounded by glass spheres within a deserted place bathed in sandy hues. This may represent a train station or a waiting room. Transitional spaces seem to hold particular significance for the artist, who presents locations functioning as passages between distinct worlds and states of being. A floating curtain separates the two exhibition rooms, symbolising this transition. A blurred image of a rain-soaked landscape, captured through a window, is projected on its light surface. Movement from one side to the other occurs fluidly, accompanied by the persistent sound of rain throughout the gallery. This experience parallels the crossing of the mirror in Alice in Wonderland. What worlds do we traverse? Fantasies, dreams or tangible territories? The work, in any case, casts its soft, bluish-golden lights throughout the space, acting as a lure.
Installation view of Breath of Silence by Chen Wei at Blindspot Gallery, 2025. Courtesy the artist and Blindspot Gallery.
Opposite, The Stars of Last Night (2024) seems to offer key insights for deciphering the artist’s work: the photograph depicts the abandoned front of a traditional shop, likely closed due to its inability to compete with the profitability of larger retailers. The broken display window, with its scattered and damaged neon lights, speaks of a world that has ceased to exist. However, a door to the left stands ajar. This is the same door found in other works, characterised by its fine, semi-transparent stripes. What world does it open to? If the shop’s display is merely a facade, where are the behind-the-scenes elements? We find ourselves at the heart of a cascade of mise en abyme, copies of the same image recurring infinitely within itself, without a reference point to identify the real. And after all, is this necessary?
One leaves the exhibition with a long-lasting sense of internal emptiness yet paradoxically also with one of hope: beyond or despite illusions, and in whatever world we inhabit, we can still create marvels to hold onto.
此外，大幅攝影作品《Tears on the Ground》（2024年）中，一根孤零零的柱子矗立於沙色調籠罩的廢棄場所裡，周遭是一些玻璃球。這裡或許是個火車站或是候車室。過渡性空間似乎對這位藝術家有著特殊意義。他所呈現的場所，充當著不同世界與存在狀態間的通道。一道輕盈飄動的簾幕分隔了兩個展廳，正是象徵著這種過渡。一副透過窗戶拍下的被雨水浸透的模糊風景影像，投射在簾子通透的表面上。觀者流暢地穿梭於簾幕兩側，伴隨著展廳內始終縈繞的雨聲。此番體驗，猶如《愛麗絲夢遊仙境》裡穿越鏡子的情節。我們究竟穿越到了何種世界？是幻想、夢境，還是真實可觸的疆域？無論如何，這件作品在整個空間內灑下柔和的藍金色光芒，好似誘餌一般。
放置於對面的作品《The Stars of Last Night》（2024年）似乎為解讀藝術家的創作提供了關鍵見解：照片記錄了某間傳統店鋪的廢棄門面，很可能是因無法與大型零售商的盈利能力競爭而關門歇業。破碎的櫥窗裡散落損毀的霓虹燈，訴說著一個已然消逝的世界。然而，左側的門微開著。這扇門有著精緻的半透明條紋，正是在藝術家其他作品中反復出現過的那扇門。它通向哪個世界？若這店鋪的陳列只是表像，那麼幕後的元素又在哪呢？我們發現自己置身於一連串套層結構的核心，相同畫面在其內部無盡複現，卻沒有任何參照點來辨別何為真實。畢竟，有必要嗎？
There is a common cultural trope that in order to be a great artist one must struggle, undergo hardships and/or suffer from heartbreak. For artist Danh Võ, this is “fucking romanticised bourgeois bullshit. It’s coming from a privileged perspective.”
Võ is here to shift established perspectives and ask what it means to make great art – a question that he and his classmates found themselves constantly asking while at art school in Denmark. “I was lumped into a fixed idea of what art could be,” says the Vietnamese-born Danish artist, who is now based in Berlin. “Denmark is so privileged: you get money when you study; you have all the resources. The art academy was great, as were the people you met there. But we were all trying to think differently and figure out: how do we make good art?”
After making what he describes as “horrible paintings” as a student, Võ took a break and, in unconsciously trying to erase everything learned about what art could be, he found “a liberty, to work in completely different way” – a way that equates art with architecture. “For me, it’s specifically about testing a space through an object. That’s what you do as an artist, no? Whether it’s a palazzo, a park or a found space.”
He’s tested various spaces, from punctuating the iconic ocular hall of Paris’s Bourse de Commerce building with large tree trunks to exhibiting his works alongside those of modernist icons such as Isamu Noguchi and Park Seo-bo at Querini Stampalia in Venice, where various art-historical periods – from rococo to baroque to contemporary – were reflected through the resulting convergence of history and architecture. “When you put these works alongside portraits of popes and nobility in a palazzo, it entirely reshapes how you consider each object and your experience of the space.”
Most recently, he’s asking viewers to reconsider their relationship with and perception of M+’s Found Space – the institution’s unique foundational feature and default basement – with his new installation, Danh Võ In Situ: Akari by Noguchi. A series of plywood frames, often used in Võ’s sculptural installations, form vertical, gridded intersections of space, in between which Noguchi’s iconic Akari lamps are embedded. Adjacent to this, sandwiched between two of Haegue Yang’s vertically suspended Sonic Rescue Ropes (2022), is a similar structure configured into a bleacher-like form, interspersed with plants, functioning somewhere between an amphitheatre and living room.
The structure mimics the intersecting lines of the museum itself, whether one is looking bottom up or top down. For Võ, Found Space is reminiscent of a highway intersection in Los Angeles. “The vast infrastructure and the big columns holding up the building; it helps me visualise how to use the space.”
Given that the entire West Kowloon cultural complex is built on reclaimed land, it was a literal blank canvas for new institutional models to emerge. Found Space was accidentally discovered during M+’s construction process, when the team found Airport Express and Tung Chung Line rail tunnels cut across that area diagonally. The tunnels were excavated and then covered with concrete to cement a new foundational feature, overcoming what was initially a design challenge. The idea of revealing something which always existed but was hidden is thematically carried through Võ’s practice.
“I curate other artists’ work but focus on bodies of works which are less exposed – like Noguchi’s playscape.” That’s not a facet of his work that people focus on. It’s not the first time Võ has shown his work in Found Space, let alone Noguchi’s at M+. The artist’s We the People (2011-16) was exhibited here earlier, and he installed an iteration of Noguchi’s playscape, Noguchi for Danh Võ: Counterpoint, outdoors in 2018. “Another thing that was lesser known is Akari lamps. What I find troubling is that they’re not so visible in the design field.”
Akari are functional. They are sculptures but also lamps, reflecting Noguchi’s design- and architecture-driven practice. They also signify Võ’s interest in equating art with architecture in the way they’re exhibited in the artist’s modular installation. The structure is adaptable, parts of it are interchangeable and items within it can be swapped with other objects such as the artist’s own works throughout the duration of the exhibition.
Noguchi created more than 100 sculptural lighting designs between 1951 and 1986; the name “akari” means “light” or “illumination” in Japanese. After the Second World War, in an attempt to rebuild the nation, a government programme took designers, architects and artists around the country to see if they could revive traditional craft practices. Akari were paper lanterns which traditionally had candles inside, and were bought to cemeteries to worship ancestors. The practice had died down significantly after the war. Noguchi took this craft and created his own version from mulberry bark paper and bamboo. Heavily inspired by Brâncuși, the Japanese artist created forms reminiscent of the modernist sculptor’s work, and then added a light bulb to them. “What you see in these beautiful structures is the fusion of two giant modernist thinkers [and] artists,” says Võ.
His interpretation adds a third, contemporary dimension to this modernist melange. “This comes back to highlighting other artists’ work within my own practice, whether it’s Noguchi or my father. If things already exist, then it’s good, because I can just be the observer. But if things are under the lid, then I think it’s worth the time and energy to reveal another perspective that I feel has been neglected or under-prioritised.”
The need to revitalise practices, customs and even spaces rendered defunct comes from a personal place and inspired one of the works Võ is most proud of – his father’s writing. Growing up in Vietnam, Võ’s father learned how to write Vietnamese in Latin script. He knew the form well but couldn’t read any western language. When the family migrated to Europe, his skill, ironically, was rendered useless, except when it came to creating signage and menus for the family-run food business.
This prompted a simple question for Võ: “What is it that handicaps or produces a skill and when does it get expressed for its quality? And then, how do you make it into a qualification or skill or something productive?” In his quest to find an answer, Võ included his father’s handwriting in his own work. 2.2.1861 (2009) was an artwork in which Võ’s father hand-copies a letter written by a French missionary, Jean-Théophane Vénard, to his father, before he was beheaded in Vietnam. Here, Võ’s father’s skill is being celebrated as art rather than relegated to being the labour behind a menial task. This outlook can also be applied to spaces, as the random discovery of Found Space led to it becoming part of an art institution, a new status with a new value.
It’s fitting that an artist who’s witnessed the evolution of M+ during its construction process was tasked with developing a three-year project that is supposed to prompt the institution to reimagine ways of exhibition-making and continuously evolve the space, while rendering it multifunctional. One condition is consistent, says Võ: “People have to engage. It should be fun.”
Auditorium, Tsuen Wan Town Hall / Hong Kong / Jan 11, 2025 / Ernest Wan /
Founded by Sanders Lau as recently as 2022, NOĒMA has already taken to calling itself “Hong Kong’s leading chamber choir” – and indeed, with its programmes in this 2024/25 season of numerous serious and challenging works, it puts other local choral groups in the shade. It had a slightly different line-up of singers for each of its past concerts, and for its recent performance at Tsuen Wan Town Hall, it comprised four sopranos and three each of altos, tenors and basses. Among them were four members of the renowned British choir Tenebrae — one of each voice type — who in the days before the concert had shared with the other performers their expertise in the British 20th-century a cappella music that constituted that evening’s programme.
The evening opened with John Tavener’s The Lamb (1982), a simple setting of William Blake’s famous Songs of Innocence. This served as a gentle warm-up for the choir, producing a sense of rapt wonderment. In the Hymn to St Cecilia (1942) by Benjamin Britten, the choir sang from the outset with a lilting fluency befitting the patron saint of music. The important lengthy soprano solo was sung by Tenebrae’s Katie Trethewey, whose fluttering vibrato was a letdown, while the same group’s Tom Robson, in his brief tenor solo near the end (“O wear your tribulation like a rose”), made an unforgettable contribution, with a voice sweet and clarion.
Sanders Lau conducting NOĒMA. Photo by Calvin Sit. Courtesy of NOĒMA.
The rest of the works all deal with death and the beyond. Lau led the singers in a moving rendition of Herbert Howells’s Requiem (1932), its emotional power deriving from the ably sustained slow chords and the many attendant dissonances, especially in the two sombre Latin-text movements. The ensuing Lux aeterna by John Cameron (1996) fits a similar text to Nimrod from Edward Elgar’s orchestral Enigma Variations (1899). The performance of this miniature, riddled with swoops of sevenths, was a rushed affair little suggestive of celestial peace, and was at any rate superfluous and anticlimactic, so luminous already was NOĒMA’s pianississimo delivery of the words “Et lux perpetua” in the Howells.
After the intermission, the choir was divided into two for an echo effect in William H Harris’s Faire is the Heaven (1925), and this time fine pacing and vocal control evoked serenity and brought out the harmonic surprises towards the concluding “endlesse perfectnesse”. This was followed by Hubert Parry’s Songs of Farewell (1918), a set of six motets of increasing textural complexity, a welcome choice inasmuch as the programme had thus far been dominated by homophony. The male singers now came to prominence, as their cries of “Thy God, thy life, thy cure” in the opening motet forcefully demonstrated. Imitative passages proved effective, and the lines “Eternal be the sleep” in the fourth motet and “But let them sleep” in the fifth were either chordally or contrapuntally hypnotic. The encore, Richard Rodney Bennett’s A Good-Night (1999), gave further comfort and closed what was indeed a good night of choral balm.
是夜表演以泰雲納的《羔羊》（1982年）揭開序幕，該曲為英國詩人布雷克名作《天真之歌》譜出簡約的合唱作品，是合唱團的熱身表演，營造出令人欣喜和投入的氣氛。在布烈頓的《聖西西利讚歌》（1942年）中，合唱團由初段開始便輕快流暢地演唱，恰如其分地歌頌了作品所描寫的音樂守護神。較長的重要女高音獨唱部份由Tenebrae的Katie Trethewey演唱，然而她飄搖的顫音令人失望；篇幅較短的男高音作品由來自同一合唱團的Tom Robson主唱，他以甜美清脆的嗓音在曲末唱出「O wear your tribulation like a rose」（苦困就像玫瑰配飾一樣），令人一聽難忘。
中場休息後，合唱團為哈里斯的《美哉天庭》（1925年）分成兩組來呈現回音效果，優美的節奏和聲音控制塑造出寧靜安謐，更以令人驚喜的和聲完成尾聲的「無盡完美」。接下來是柏利的《離別之歌》（1918年），這首合唱組曲由六首贊歌組成，曲式質感層層遞進，為至今僅以主線旋律為主的選曲一新耳目。男歌唱家主導了這首作品，在首段贊歌中高呼 「Thy God, thy life, thy cure」（你的上帝、你的生命、你的療藥 ），有力地展現曲式的層次感。多個模仿段表達出更深的感染力，而第四首贊歌的歌詞「Eternal be the sleep」（從此長眠）和第五首贊歌的 「But let them sleep」（且讓他們睡去）在和弦或伴奏上都展現出懾人魅力。合唱團在安歌環節帶來貝納特的暖心作品《良宵》（1999年），為美好的合唱之夜作結。
Angela Su’s work flows from the intersection of science and art, where intricacy meets imagination. With roots in biochemistry and visual arts, her practice is a dance between the tangible and the ethereal, as she weaves delicate lines into intricate drawings, often unsettling and always profound. Her creations—whether on paper, in video or through hair embroidery—speak of bodies in flux, beings in metamorphosis, and the tension between control and chaos.
Su’s art explores the shifting nature of the human body, its transformations, and the interplay of science and fiction. Through her meticulous renderings of invented anatomies, she questions the certainty of the medical gaze, creating speculative worlds where bones become snowflakes, veins twist into vines, and organisms float in space, suspended in the in-between. Her hybrid figures exist in a state of becoming, fragile yet fierce, inviting us into the mystery of the body as it unravels and reforms.
In her hands, the body is a site of resistance, a vessel for transformation and a story waiting to be told. With each line, Su reimagines the universe, drawing us into a world where the boundaries of the possible stretch beyond the limits of flesh and form, offering us a glimpse of something both intimate and infinite.
Jessica Wan: Can you tell us why you decided to undertake your residency in the UK?Angela Su: From April to June this year, I participated in a private artist residency programme in north London, which partly aimed to allow artists to leave their own workshops and take a rest. Because of how busy I have been these few years, I have been constantly stressed, so it was a welcome respite. I first visited London in 2018 at the invitation of the Wellcome Collection, for a two-week residency in the Contagious Cities project that it had commissioned. The last time I was in London was to take part in Frieze London in 2019. I had good experiences both times I was there, so I have been hoping to stay in the city for a longer period.
I had planned to take some taxidermy courses during this residency, but it didn’t happen in the end. I found several places that offered courses when I was visiting in 2018 but, perhaps due to the pandemic, many of them had been cancelled. A friend told me about Get Stuffed, an old place in Islington which has been run by at least three generations. The shop is inconspicuous; its windows and door are behind bars. All visitors have to make an appointment and are only allowed to enter after ringing the doorbell.
As I got through the door, my heart began to race and my eyes widened. Taxidermy mounts of different sizes filled the 300 to 400 sq ft shop space, not in an orderly display like those of a boutique but rather like in a workshop. Through these piles of lifelike animal carcasses was a narrow aisle, with a messy desk at the end of it. I didn’t know if there was a huge workspace hidden at the back, but I imagined there was, and it was a bloody one. Apart from the ordinary mounts of rabbits, white mice and birds, there were also rarer specimens such as bears, lions and kangaroos. The shop owner told me that these carcasses were all donations from zoos and not hunting trophies. Often when an animal died in a zoo, the zookeepers didn’t know what to do, so they asked him to make taxidermy of the body. Other, more common animals were also obtained through humane channels.
The shop owner emphasised that it takes years of training and practice to become a taxidermist. Even if you know how to taxidermy one species, it doesn’t mean you’d know how to do it with another. If a piece is not properly preserved, it might collapse, rot and breed maggots. He was honest enough to tell me that, rather than taking a class on taxidermy, it’d be better to buy books and teach myself, and to practise consistently. I casually asked if I could film his work process, and he answered that his shop had been passed down for generations, the techniques were not shared with outsiders and filming the taxidermy process was not allowed. He also mentioned that many artists, such as Damien Hirst, had collaborated with him. The real human skull used in Hirst’s diamond-encrusted skull [For the Love of God, 2007] was provided by him. After just a 30-minute conversation, I felt that this shop owner was extremely professional and had a true craftsman’s spirit. But at the same time, he had a certain attitude, as if he didn’t want to entertain visitors who were there to satisfy their curiosity, let alone tourists like me. However, after a local friend explained, I learned that years ago, Get Stuffed had been attacked by an animal rights organisation, which is why the shop’s windows were protected by iron bars. No wonder the shop owner was so wary. Is it right to use animal carcasses as art pieces? I don’t really have an answer to that question. I only remember walking down the aisle in the shop, feeling as if time had frozen, as if I were walking between life and death.
Hunterian Museum, London. Photo: Angela Su.
JW: In a similar way to how early architectural drawings were heavily influenced by anatomical perspectives and the structural form of the human body, your works often lie at the intersection of different disciplines. How have your studies influenced your work?AS: It might be because I majored in science during university that I have always been interested in research beyond the realm of fine art. I often read books about the history of medicine or the history of technology and think about how to incorporate these discussions into my work. This time in London, I noticed that bookshops often promote books on popular science, which might have something to do with the post-pandemic times, or perhaps it was related to the widespread discussions on [subjects like] artificial intelligence in recent years. So, I took the opportunity to buy many popular science books. I love London because of its long history, including the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. I was incredibly excited to see Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine in the Science Museum. The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History in Hackney [in east London] has a certain Victorian Gothic horror feel to it, which also fascinates me.
Whenever I visit a country, I make a point of visiting the local medical museum. I remember when I visited London in 2018, the Hunterian Museum was closed for renovations, so I was fortunate to have the chance to visit this time. I didn’t expect such a small-looking museum to have so many anatomical specimens, neatly arranged in bottles. The way the specimens are presented is different from the Natural History Museum or the Grant Museum of Zoology [both also in London], which retain a 19th-century atmosphere. Typically, historical museums of this kind only use ordinary glass, which reflects light, making it difficult for visitors to clearly view the exhibits. But the Hunterian Museum is different; it uses expensive, non-reflective museum glass, allowing visitors to get closer and view the specimens in high definition. I wanted so much to sit down and sketch right away, but the collection was so vast that I couldn’t possibly finish it all.
The Natural History Museum in London emphasises historicity, but I noticed that the explanatory texts throughout the museum often mention reflections on colonial history. Institutions like this often face historical issues, as many exhibits were acquired through unfair means during the British Empire period, either through trade or plunder. However, they openly acknowledge this history and claim to be working towards better ways to address these issues. Of course, I can’t know for sure whether the museum will truly handle these complex problems, and it’s possible that displaying these explanatory texts is already enough to avoid criticism. On the other hand, precisely because of the need to address decolonisation, artefacts that used to be part of the permanent collection at the Wellcome Collection before the pandemic [that perpetuate racist, sexist or ableist views] have been removed. This is quite disappointing. I’ve heard that these artefacts can now only be displayed sporadically in temporary exhibitions within specific contexts.
Sewing Together My Split Mind, Straight Stitch by Angela Su, Hair embroidery on fabric, 2020. Courtesy the artist and Blindspot Gallery.
JW: What was the thinking behind the three hair embroidery pieces you exhibited in the Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art exhibition at the Barbican Centre in February? AS: It was a very interesting exhibition, and many of the works were related to freedom of expression. Unfortunately, in February, the Barbican Centre abruptly cancelled a talk titled The Shoah after Gaza, which addressed the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza. In response, a collector called on the artists participating in Unravel to withdraw from the exhibition in protest and to support freedom of speech. I believe six artists eventually responded to this call. One thing to clarify is that the Barbican’s public programming department and its art exhibition department are two separate entities. Personally, I see this incident as a public relations and administrative disaster. The Israeli-Palestinian issue is highly complex, involving nearly a century of history and conflict. Rather than calling on artists to withdraw from the exhibition, it might have been more productive to organise a dialogue or forum on how art and cultural institutions can navigate such challenging and contentious situations.
I think the curatorial team handled the situation well, given the pressure. They placed notices in the gallery spaces vacated by the artists who withdrew, explaining the context to visitors. They respected the artists’ choices and didn’t hide any facts. Malaysian artist Yee I-Lann’s approach was commendable. She didn’t withdraw but made an intervention by displaying books on Gaza’s history in front of her work, inviting the audience to delve deeper into the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, for artists, the dilemma is whether to let the work continue to be shown and keep the conversation about freedom of expression alive, or to withdraw as a form of protest. It’s a difficult decision. Simplifying such a complex issue into a binary opposition by demanding that artists exit or cancel exhibitions seems reductive. After careful consideration, I decided to continue exhibiting my work.
I exhibited three pieces from my Sewing Together My Split Mind: Straight Stitch series. I began this series in 2019, focusing on bodily perception and representation while exploring the trauma and healing caused by social events. The objective of stitching is to heal but the process can be incredibly painful. After trauma, how do we heal? Can we ever fully recover? Or will trauma leave permanent scars? Is it even possible to choose not to heal? The audience is free to find their own answers to these questions.
JW: After this residency, what other subjects do you want to continue exploring? AS: Probably subjects related to technology and artificial intelligence. These are popular topics in recent years but I don’t want to give the impression of jumping on a bandwagon. I’ve always been interested in science fiction and speculative literature, and these elements often appear in my work. My first solo exhibition, in 2008, was about imagining cyborgs, and my 2013 solo show explored the relationship between humans and machines. In 2015, I initiated a science fiction publishing project called Dark Fluid. The book uses science fiction to imagine the future of Hong Kong. The project invited artists, cultural workers and activists involved in social movements to participate in a writing workshop, after which each participant created a short text or visual piece. These works, along with essays and workshop transcripts, were included in the book.
Two months in London felt too short, and there were so many things I wanted to do. One of my regrets was not being able to meet with Hong Kong artists who have relocated there. Indeed, I think the topic of Hongkongers moving to the UK is worth exploring. While this isn’t part of my own research focus, I hope that in future, artists will take this up as a subject for their work.
Jessica Wan: 你剛剛提到解剖學，而早期的建築繪圖深受解剖視角和人體形態結構的影响。那麼，這些研究是怎麼影響到你的創作呢？Angela Su: 可能因為我大學主修科學，所以我一直關注非純藝術領域的研究，經常讀一些關於醫學歷史或者科技歷史的書籍，然後思考如何把這些討論融入我的作品中。這次到倫敦，察覺書店很多時候會推廣科普書籍，這可能是疫情後的現象，也可能與人工智能和量子物理學近年的廣泛討論有關，我於是趁機買了很多科普的書籍。喜愛倫敦，因爲它的歷史久遠，見證了啟蒙運動和工業革命這兩個重要年代。當我在倫敦科學博物館 （Science Museum）裡面看到Charles Babbage 的Difference Engine, 我會感到非常興奮。位於Hackney區的The Viktor Wynd Museum Of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History帶有多少維多利亞時代歌德式恐怖，也令我著迷。
我通常到每一個國家，都會特地到當地的醫學博物館。記得2018年到倫敦的時候，亨特博物館（Hunterian Museum）正閉館進行裝修，所以興幸這次有機會可以參觀。沒想到這看起來小小的博物館裡有那麽多一瓶一瓶的生物解剖樣本，而且樣本的呈現方法並不像自然博物館（Natural History Museum）或倫敦動物學博物館 (Grant Zoology Museum)般保持原有19世紀的風格。通常各地這類型歷史悠久的博物館一般只採用普通的玻璃，這種玻璃會反光，觀眾很難清晰地觀賞展品，但亨特博物館不一樣，它用的是不反光的貴價博物館玻璃（museum glass），讓觀眾跟展品的距離拉近，可以「高清」地觀賞展品。我當時很想坐下來速寫，但因為藏品太豐富，根本畫不完。
Jessica Wan: 記得你有三幅髮絲刺繡作品參加了 「Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art」 這個展覽。Angela Su: 對，我被邀參與了巴比肯中心（Barbican Centre）在二月份舉辦的展覽「Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art」。這是一個很有意思的展覽，其中有很多作品都和言論自由有關。奈何，巴比肯中心在二月份臨時取消了一個關於巴勒斯坦人在加沙被屠殺的講座（The Shoah after Gaza）。某藏家有見及此，立即呼籲參展Unravel的藝術家退出展覽，從而向巴比肯中心抗議及表達對言論自由的支持，好像最後有六位藝術家響應了。要澄清一點，巴比肯中心負責公眾項目的部門與藝術展覽的部門是屬於兩個不同的單位。這次事故，我個人認為是一場公關及行政災難，加上以巴問題複雜，牽涉起碼近一百年的歷史和衝突。與其呼籲藝術家退出展覽，不如舉辦講座對談，探討藝術文化機構怎樣可以處理和面對如此複雜兩不討好的情況。
這次我展出了三幅屬於 《Sewing Together My Split Mind: Straight Stitch》系列的作品。這個系列是從2019年開始創作的，主要關注身體的感知與表象，並探討社會事件所致的創傷與癒合。縫合的目的是治癒，但這個過程非常痛苦。經歷創傷後，我們該如何療癒？我們真的可以痊癒嗎？還是創傷會永遠留下疤痕？可以選擇不療癒嗎？觀眾可以自行決定屬於自己的答案。
Jessica Wan: 這次駐留後，有什麼想要繼續討論的主題嗎？Angela Su: 可能是關於科技、人工智能之類的主題吧。這些都是近年熱門的話題，但我不想給人一個投機的印象。其實我一直對科幻小說及推想文學很有興趣，作品也不時流露科幻或關於科技的元素。我在2008年的第一個個展是關於cyborg賽博格的想像；2013年的個展是關於人類和機械的關係。2015年我發起了一個科幻創作出版計劃叫《暗流體》。《暗流體》這本書以科幻小說為方法，是一個探討關於香港未來想像的思考練習。這計劃邀請藝術文化工作者以及活躍於社會運動的人士共同參與一個寫作工作坊，工作坊後參與者各自創作一部短篇文字或圖像作品，連同論文及工作坊的文字記錄，一併收錄於此書當中。
Rossi & Rossi / Wong Chuk Hang, Hong Kong / Sep 28 – Nov 14, 2024 /
The adjective that you will most often see associated with Nepali artist, preservationist, novelist and scholar Lain Singh Bangdel (1919–2002) is “iconic”. He is the man who single-handedly brought contemporary art into the Himalayan country, while at the same time being the most dedicated scholar of Nepal’s artistic past, painstakingly and doggedly compiling catalogues of looted or lost art, and making a remarkable contribution to our understanding of Nepal’s history and artistic heritage. A pioneer and the first truly international Nepali artist, Bangdel kept his deep interest in his country’s ancient art rather separate from his own artistic practice, which mainly consists of very modernist oil paintings, with clear influences from his contemporaries from all around the world.
A recent show at Rossi & Rossi Wong Chuk Hang’s gallery was a very rare chance for people in Hong Kong to get a glimpse of the work of this household name in Nepal – a small but still quite comprehensive overview of the different styles and approaches Bangdel adopted throughout his career as a painter.
Bangdel was born near a tea estate in Darjeeling, India to a Rai family – an ethnic group indigenous to the Khotang valley in eastern Nepal. Before settling in Nepal in the second half of his life, he travelled extensively in India and Europe, absorbing new ideas and influences that he would then apply to his own work, switching styles and approaches but always painting about Nepal, its scenery, its people and its colours.
Bangdel graduated from the Government College of Art and Craft in Calcutta, now Kolkata, with a degree in Fine Arts in 1945, and spent his time in the city not only studying arts but also writing a number of novels about Nepal in Nepali. Initially, he adopted a rather classical, 19th-century style of writing, until his novel The Cripple’s Friend (1951), which is regarded as the first Nepali work of fiction written in a realistic style. This literary shift foreshadowed his growing interest in contemporary ways of describing modern life, whether in visual art or writing, which is the art form for which he is most recognised today.
Mother & Child by Lain Singh Bangdel, Oil on canvas, 1965. Courtesy Rossi & Rossi.
In 1952, he left for Europe, letting himself be inspired by Picasso and other cubist artists, Gauguin, Cézanne and, more generally, modernism. In the early 50s, Bangdel was part of a group of Asian artists residing in Paris, including Zao Wou-Ki and Sanyu from China; Affandi from Indonesia; Zubeida Agha, one of the first Pakistani modern artists; and Paritosh Sen and Akbar Padamsee from India. Like them, Bangdel studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, which is when he became exposed to and absorbed the techniques and aesthetics of the modernist movements that were being developed in Europe at the time.
Unlike some of his Asian contemporaries in Paris, though, he never explored western scenery or themes, transposing onto his paintings only the techniques but not the subject matter; whether they are landscapes, depictions of social vignettes or portraits, his paintings are always unmistakably about Nepal. The Rossi & Rossi show features examples of the different styles he used to paint Nepali themes. In his realistic phase, Bangdel painted portraits and self portraits in a nearly academic style, infusing just a slight touch of irony or tenderness, depending on the person portrayed – keeping the irony mostly for his self portraits. When he moved onto abstraction, he depicted Himalayan villages as geometrical clusters of colour set in the middle of a grey-to-white scale of snow and mountain peaks, or azure rain, in works such as Rainy Season (1974) and Winter in the Valley (1984). In spite of their abstraction, with only patches of colour depicted amid a snowy landscape, a close look reveals recognisable Nepali village architecture, with its characteristic tiles, thatched roofs and multiple front windows. In A Village near Kathmandu (1963), on the other hand, he sticks to more representational depictions of the Himalayan countryside, with rural houses in red and yellow, thatched roofs faithfully reproduced, contrasting against the sharp white of the snow-covered peaks behind them.
All of these works were produced after Bangdel had returned to Nepal and decided to settle down there – initially, at the invitation of King Mahendra, who had asked him in 1961 to live in the country to help modernise the art scene there.
In the 60s and again in the 90s, Bangdel showed how deeply he had been influenced by Picasso, especially with paintings such as Mother and Child (1965), where this eternal theme is explored through precise contours and blurry details, against a very colourful background; and even more so in Mother Nepal II (1990) which, in its nearly monochrome blue and pale blue palette, recalls the Spanish artist’s Blue Period. Not that Bangdel’s work is derivative, even when the influences he has absorbed are so recognisable: in works such as Misty Mt. Everest (1978) he mixes abstraction, in how he depicts the mist and the clouds, and very careful realism, in the portions of the painting that show the mountain’s granite in all its details. In order to pay homage to his deep knowledge of traditional Nepali sculpture and his work as a conservationist, the show, co-curated by Rossi & Rossi and Kathmandu-based Swosti Rajbhandari Kayastha, is also dotted with classical Buddhist statues and sculptures, in bronze and hard stone, which are what we more commonly associate with Nepali art. In this, too, Bangdel caused a revolution of sorts, pushing both private and public institutions to become more engaged with protecting the country’s cultural heritage.
From his own personal observations in his copious writings, we can see how he positioned himself as a “Nepali that is new to Nepal”, balancing the desire to be fully acknowledged as a Nepali artist, in spite of the decades he had spent out of the country, and to be someone who challenges the traditional notions of figurative art, in line with the task that had been given him by the king. The lasting influence and prestige of his work show that he was more than successful in his endeavour.
他在1952年前往歐洲，受到畢卡索和其他立體派藝術家、高更、塞尚以及泛義上現代主義的啟發。 在50年代初，Bangdel與一群亞洲藝術家在巴黎居住，其中包括來自中國的趙無極和常玉、印尼的 Affandi、巴基斯坦最早的現代藝術家之一Zubeida Agha，以及印度的 Paritosh Sen 和 Akbar Padamsee。Bangdel與他們一樣在法國美術學院學習。他在那裡接觸並吸收了當時正在歐洲發展形成的現代主義運動的技術和美學。
可是，有別於在巴黎的一些亞洲同代藝術家，Bangdel從未描繪過西方的風景或主題，他只在畫作中運用了所學的技巧，而非主題。無論是關於風景、生活片段還是人像，他的畫作總是毫無疑問地以尼泊爾為主題。Rossi & Rossi的展覽展示了他描繪尼泊爾的各種畫作風格。在他的寫實創作階段，Bangdel以類似學院派的風格繪畫人物肖像和自畫像，並根據描繪的對象加入些微的諷刺或感性元素（諷刺通常只會在他的自畫像中出現）。當他轉向抽象創作後，他在《Rainy Season》（1974 年）和《Winter in the Valley》（1984 年）等作品中將喜馬拉雅村莊描繪成位於灰白色的雪和山峰或天藍色雨水中的幾何色彩斑塊。雖然這些作品比較抽象，只在雪景中的描畫了幾塊色彩，但如果走近觀察就能辨認出其中的尼泊爾村莊建築，包括其特色瓦片、茅草屋頂和多個前窗。然而在《A Village near Kathmandu》（1963 年）中，他卻用更具體的方式描畫喜馬拉雅鄉村。他以紅色和黃色繪畫農村的房屋，寫實呈現茅草屋頂，與背景中亮白色的山峰形成鮮明對比。
Blue Lotus Gallery is proud to announce the latest exhibition, Shooting Hoops by Austin Bell, coinciding with the release of his self-published book of the same title.
In this ambitious project, Bell catalogued every outdoor basketball court in Hong Kong—an impressive total of 2,549 courts. His journey took him through the city’s nooks and crannies, relying solely on public transport. Through aerial photography, the images highlight the unique designs of these courts, their ubiquity, and their stark contrast against the city’s vertical density.
This exploration not only mapped the locations of the courts but also captured the diverse topography of Hong Kong.
