All posts filed under: Reviews

Reina Sugihara 杉原玲那

Published by Brady Ng

Respirare /Empty Gallery /Hong Kong /Dec 8, 2024 – Mar 1, 2025 / Everyone experienced the Covid pandemic on different terms. There were forced lockdowns for some and productive isolation for others, social pods and cautious public encounters, with a constant reminder of strained medical systems and an immense loss of life. For Tokyo-based painter Reina Sugihara, that era provided an opportunity to slow down and start a new hobby. Like many millennials around the world, she picked up bird watching. That was one of the kernels for Respirare, an exhibition of paintings by Sugihara at Empty Gallery. After a bout of sickness that affected her breathing, the artist came across an article about a bar-tailed godwit that set a world record by flying nonstop for 11 days, covering 13,559 kilometres between Alaska and Tasmania. Sugihara began to consider how birds breathe. Unlike human lungs, which move air in and out through the same pathway, avian respiration enables a one-way air flow, making it an efficient system that enhances oxygen uptake. This is crucial for …

Chow Chun Fai 周俊輝

Published by Ilaria Maria Sala

Map of Amnesia /Tang Contemporary Art /Hong Kong /Sep 13 – Oct 15, 2024 / The latest solo exhibition of Chow Chun Fai’s works at Tang Contemporary Art, Map of Amnesia, is a return to some of the artist’s favourite themes – Hong Kong city scenes, streets, taxis (Chow was a taxi driver for a few years), Hong Kong movies and nostalgia – which are explored on 14 canvases in a bright palette, slightly acidic, recalling the neon signs that used to fill the urban landscape. For these acrylic paintings, Chow used some of the images he has collected during more than 20 years of street photography. They show partially distorted buildings and streets, as if they were taken using an ultra-wide-angle lens. The result is akin to those vivid dreams in which familiar places appear not quite as they are in reality, yet perfectly recognisable, a kind of retinal memory that becomes entangled in meanings hidden in our subconsious. And to further complicate the picture, Chow has inserted some of the most iconic Hong …

Christopher K Ho 何恩懷

Published by Brady Ng

I Am a 70-Year-Old British Sculptor /PHD Group /Sep 14 – Nov 30, 2024 / Christopher K Ho isn’t a septuagenarian; he’s a couple of decades years younger than that. Ho isn’t British either; he was born in Hong Kong, and his upbringing and education were primarily in the United States. He’s an artist who splits his time between Hong Kong and the US, and an arts administrator who is the executive director of Asia Art Archive. For his show at PHD Group, I Am a 70-Year-Old British Sculptor, Ho made 30 brass and aluminium sculptures forming one series, Return to Order, over the past three years. The full set was shown alongside 10 new drawings, each of which corresponds to one of the hefty three-dimensional works. Ho’s creative process behind the artworks was anchored by an architectural exercise that starts with nine squares in a grid. By beginning with an arrangement of three rows or columns of three squares, architects make adjustments to introduce complexity to a space. The squares can be resized, reshaped …

Liao Jiaming 廖家明

Published by Brady Ng

Melting Suns on the Screen /DE SARTHE Gallery /Hong Kong /Aug 31 – Sept 28, 2024 / As a preamble to his exhibition Melting Suns on the Screen, Liao Jiaming set up The Arcana Intelligent (2023), an interactive installation meant to simulate interactions with a sacred digital entity. Participants visiting de Sarthe Gallery sat or knelt on a cushion placed on the gallery’s floor, looking up at a nude, seemingly genderless avatar. Its barrel chest and awkwardly outstretched arms gave it an inhuman quality. Behind it was a vast vista of urban towers – blocky, dense, unclear whether they were part of an idealised, futuristic cityscape or a place at the end of civilisation. The avatar and participant spoke to one another, their brief interactions culminating in a question posed by the visitor, the bigger the better. Silicon and software cogitations would yield an oracular response in the form of a dynamically generated tarot card. Do this on the right day and someone, such as artist Amy Tong, was present to decipher the image and …

Wallace Chan 陳世英 

Published by Jessica Wan

Transcendence /Santa Maria della Pietà /Venice /Apr 19 – Sep 30, 2024 / Against the backdrop of information overload and techno culture, our attention is constantly focused and optimised on digital platforms. The rationalist worldview that we can ameliorate the human condition through hyper-utilitarian goals, such as expanding the physical reality of our mind with artificial intelligence, has sparked a revival of self-development, spiritual well-being and a new openness to the religious and the numinous. For multidisciplinary sculptor and artist Wallace Chan, the pursuit of a meditative state and the ability of the mind to transcend the boundaries of space and time have taken the form of a lifelong exploration of the philosophy of non-duality, where conflict and harmony are interchangeable realities. After moving to Hong Kong from Fuzhou in 1961 aged five, Chan began as a gemstone apprentice aged 16. Believing that all things in the world possess an inner spirit, he developed an uncanny understanding of materiality, leading to his invention of the “Wallace cut” in 1987. Inspired by multiple exposures used in …

Lee Jin Woo 李鎮雨

Published by Ilaria Maria Sala

Inside the White Cube: Lee Jin Woo /White Cube /Hong Kong /Jun 1 – Sep 7, 2024 / Lee Jin Woo’s solo exhibition at Hong Kong’s White Cube Gallery, provides a rather distinctive, nearly spiritual experience, as we stare at his semi-sculptural, abstract paintings, created through the methodical, slow manipulation of paper and charcoal. Some of his works are in various shades of light blue, while others are in grey-black monochrome. They have been arranged at White Cube with the gallery’s signature spaciousness, leaving a whole wall for each work and fully drawing in the viewer. The paintings, with their monochrome stillness and the dynamic jagged surfaces, created by the way in which Lee manipulates paper and charcoal to create texture, seem to change constantly: if we look at the overall effect, we see an imaginary geological landscape, darker at the bottom, where the ground would be, gradually becoming more ethereal as we look at a dreamlike, sometimes ominous looking sky, pale blue or pale grey. Lee, born in Seoul in 1959, moved to Paris in …

Debe Sham 岑愷怡

Published by Ilaria Maria Sala

Park Solo /Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre /Mar 13 – Sep 16, 2024 / Debe Sham’s exhibition Park Solo, at the Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre, is spread throughout all five floors of this singularly shaped venue, and is best viewed by going down the stairs from the fifth floor all the way to the first – which opens onto Hong Kong Park’s children games precinct, a charming echo of some of the sculptures on display. The first works the visitor encounters on entering the building are Windmills (xx),a series of gold-plated, spiky, stainless-steel circles. “My inspiration for these comes from the colourful paper windmills people buy at temples during Lunar New Year for good fortune, called fongche. I find that this is a traditional Hong Kong shape that is quite overlooked. They are very characteristic and very beautiful,” says Sham. Like windmills, these golden, minimalistic fongche spin when touched or when the wind coming through the door is strong enough. As this first encounter makes clear, Sham’s practice is highly informed by play and …

Izumi Kato 加藤泉 

Published by Brady Ng

Perrotin /Hong Kong /Mar 24 – May 18, 2024 / Model figures offer a surprisingly satisfying unboxing experience. First, images on the cardboard box spark the imagination – how could the model within fit into one’s collection? Then there’s the sense of anticipation during the ride home, followed by care when the box is finally opened. Loose pieces of plastic might be found in sealed, see-through bags, or the parts might need to be snipped from sprues, a “new toy smell” released after being sealed in at the factory. The figure will require assembly and there could be no instructions. Some models need to be painted, a process that could take days or weeks. Finally, decals add a touch of realism or personalisation. The model joins an army or fleet or menagerie, and then the collector starts the process all over again. Izumi Kato loves vintage toys. As a youngster, he particularly liked models of fauna from around the world, perhaps using them to connect with creatures that he couldn’t encounter in his hometown in …

Maggi Hambling 瑪吉·漢布林

Published by Christine Chan Chiu

The Night / Pearl Lam Galleries / Hong Kong / Mar 26 – May 20, 2024 / Maggi Hambling is an expert at painting the night sky. After all, she has been portraying its many faces since she was a 14-year-old art student. The Night is her first solo presentation in Asia since 2019, and highlights new series of paintings that focus on the night sky and water, showcasing a unique confluence of western and eastern influences that draw inspiration from Chinese ink. In addition, the exhibition features another provocative new series, Sexy, an exploration of the female orgasm. Bold and unapologetic, the presentation, in true Hambling style, is an affirmation of the way art is supposed to break barriers.  For many years, the artist has started off her day drawing in ink, a practice that has become second nature to her. But Hambling has come a long way since her student days, when she would study ink drawings at the British Museum. Her Night Clouds (2021) series of paintings is testament not only to …

Samuel Swope 

Published by Brady Ng

Nervous Thrasher / Current Plans / Hong Kong / Feb 3, 2024 The way drones glide through the sky looks effortless, even elegant. But the mechanics behind it are anything but. Propellers turn the rotary motion of blades into linear thrust, creating a disruptive wake. A raw display of power aside, the noise is raucous.  All of that comes together in Samuel Swope’s art practice, which he demonstrated for an audience in February at Current Plans, hosted at Spring Workshop in Wong Chuk Hang, as the inaugural project of UnderCurrents, a “year-long series of experimental happenings”. The event was called Nervous Thrasher and, in Swope’s words, was a performative installation involving acts of real-time sonification of airborne sculptures, in which data is collected and mapped into audio form.  One sculpture was a column of six black balloon-like vessels filled with helium, with a drone as its base in a visual nod to Sputnik, the first human-made satellite, which was launched by the USSR in October 1957. During his performance, Swope approached it to plug in …