All posts tagged: Ben Brown Fine Arts

Tseng Kwong Chi

East Meets West / Ben Brown Fine Arts / Hong Kong / Jan 10 – Mar 9 / Christine Chan Chiu In 1979, Tseng Kwong Chi was meeting his family for dinner at the upscale Windows on the World restaurant in New York’s World Trade Center. Jackets were required for men, and Tseng decided to wear the Chinese-style Mao suit he had bought at a thrift store. Mistaken for a Chinese dignitary, he was treated as a VIP at the restaurant, and from that moment the artist, then 29 years old, would don the sartorial attire of the “ambiguous ambassador” for his self-portraits over the next decade. Presented by Ben Brown Fine Arts, East Meets West is arguably the late artist’s best-known series of photographic works, in which he poses with famous landmarks around the world in the signature Mao suit and reflective sunglasses. Tseng realised his outfit not only offered him the anonymity of taking on another persona but also a semblance of power when he was mistaken for an important Chinese government official. Back then, …

Elements of Transcendence: Miya Ando, Kitty Chou, Hyon Gyon, and Lucy Liu at Ben Brown Fine Arts Hong Kong

Published by Artomity Magazine

Jun 15 – Aug 31, 2019Opening Brunch Jun 15, 11am – 3pm Ben Brown Fine Arts is thrilled to present a summer group exhibition, Elements of Transcendence, at the Hong Kong gallery. The exhibition brings together the work of four artists who explore spirituality through their artwork, employing various artistic techniques and practices, historical and autobiographical references, and imagery and symbolism ranging from abstraction to realism. The output of these four international artists is informed by both Eastern and Western influences and experiences, resulting in a poignant and provocative conversation within the gallery walls.

Julian Charrière at Ping Pong

Published by Artomity Magazine

Ben Brown Fine Arts and Ping Pong Gintonería present: An Invitation To Disappear Video Screening Monday November 19, 8.30 –10pm Shot in Southeast Asia, Julian Charrière’s new film An Invitation to Disappear records a psychosocial transcendent rave set in the fields of a monoculture palm oil plantation. A linear camera shot through nauseatingly infinite rows of trees is underpinned by the mesmerizing pulse of natural sounds and techno beats, developed together with the British DJ and producer Inland. The film also marks the first outcome of the artist’s collaboration with philosopher Dehlia Hannah, responding to the 200th anniversary of a volcanic eruption in Indonesia that plunged the world into darkness and weather extremes—a climate cooling crisis remembered in Europe as the “year without a summer.” The delirium of the rave feels increasingly alienating within the man-made grid of the plantation, culminating in feelings of unease competing with the temptation of intrigue. Fog, flashing strobes, and overwhelming sounds turn the palm grove into a melancholic party zone in which the lack of people only exacerbates the dystopian …

Hank Willis Thomas

Published by Artomity Magazine

My Life is OursBen Brown Fine ArtsHong KongSep 20 – Oct 27, 2018Valencia Tong American conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas is known for examining issues of identity, race, intolerance and protest. For his first solo exhibition in Asia, at Ben Brown Fine Arts, he reinterpreted archival photographs he found of protests in Hong Kong and mainland China from past and present to highlight theuniversality of recurring themes of oppression across history. The artist also explores the notions of materiality and audience engagement, deliberately screen-printing the images onto retroreflective sheeting, which is usually used to make road signs visible in the dark. On top of that, painterly brushstrokes sit on the outermost layer, giving it the illusion of abstraction. It is only when the images are manually activated by light, such as a camera flash or a torch, that the full details of the historical images come to view. Since the appearance of the works keeps changing, mirroring the constant state of sociopolitical flux in the world at large, the viewer is literally and metaphorically invited to look closer and dig deeper, beyond what is …

Gert & Uwe Tobias

Published by Artomity Magazine

By Diana d’Arenberg Parmanand During the Ottoman invasion of Wallachia in 1462, Sultan Mehmed II, who had marched into the territory with an army of more than 150,000 troops, entered the small town of Târgoviște in what is today Romania to find a forest of 20,000 Turkish men, women and children, all impaled. The perpetrator: Voivode Vlad III Dracula. The carnage earned the ruler the moniker Vlad “Tepes”, or the Impaler, among the local population. A little further afield in England, his numerous acts of heinous cruelty, and his patronymic, would inspire the creation of Irish writer Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. They also sowed the seeds of inspiration for the work of identical twin brothers and artistic collaborators Gert and Uwe Tobias. Born in Transylvania, Romania to a Saxon family, the artists explore their cultural identity through mythology in their woodblock print paintings, ceramic sculptures, typewriter drawings and watercolours. Having spent their childhood under Nicolae Ceaușescu’s rule, the myths and misconceptions of Vlad Dracul, as he is known in Romania, did not initially colour their youth. There …

J. Park: Embodiment 2017 | Ben Brown Fine Arts Hong Kong

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Ben Brown Fine Arts is pleased to present J PARK: Embodiment 2017, our first solo exhibition of artist J. Park at the Hong Kong gallery. J. Park is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work includes painting, sculpture, photography, video and installations. This exhibition presents a group of recent paintings as well as two video installations. J. Park addresses many social and political themes in his work, including surveillance, communication and social order, all through the framework of omnipresent technology. J. Park’s paintings are comprised of elaborate arrangements of dots and bars evoking complex computer coding, microchips, braille, barcodes and myriad other technological associations. J PARK: Embodiment 2017 15 November 2017 – 6 January 2018 Opening: 14 November 2017, 6 – 8 pm Ben Brown Fine Arts 303 Pedder Building 12 Pedder Street Central Hong Kong Email Web Mo-Sa 11am – 7pm Image: Maze of Onlookers by J. Park, Acrylic on canvas, 227.3 x 181.8 cm, 2016.

J. Park

Published by Artomity Magazine

Nov 15 – Jan 7 Opening: Tuesday, Nov 14, 6 – 8pm The first solo exhibition of artist at the Hong Kong gallery, Embodiment includes recent paintings, sculpture as well as two video installations. Ben Brown Fine Arts 303 Pedder Building 12 Pedder Street, Central T (852)2522 9600 Email Web Mo-Sa 11am – 7pm Ben Brown Fine Arts opened its first location on Cork Street in the heart of Mayfair, London, in 2004. The gallery has prominently positioned itself on the contemporary art scene with the sole UK representation of artists such as Ron Arad, Tony Bevan, Ori Gersht, Candida Höfer, Claude & François-Xavier Lalanne, Heinz Mack, Vik Muniz, Gavin Turk and Not Vital. Also renowned for its strong expertise in 20th century Italian art, the gallery has been exhibiting the work of Alighiero Boetti and Lucio Fontana, amongst others, since its inception. In 2008, Ben Brown Fine Arts opened a new exhibition space on Brook’s Mews, also in Mayfair, designed by architect Alexander Maybank. The office and viewing room are conveniently located across from the gallery space. In …

Ben Brown Fine Arts

Published by Artomity Magazine

Heinz Mack Structures Monday, March 20, 2017 6 – 8 pm Ben Brown Fine Arts is honoured to present HEINZ MACK: Structures, the revolutionary artist’s second solo show at the Hong Kong gallery. The exhibition, which will run concurrently with Art Basel Hong Kong 2017, includes paintings, works on paper and reliefs from the artist’s renowned ZERO period to the present, examining his lifelong interest in light, colour, form, vibration and sensory perception. Mack made his initial impact on post-war discourse with the ZERO movement, founded with Otto Piene in 1957 in Düsseldorf, Germany, and later joined by Günther Uecker in 1961. ZERO was a blank slate for these young German artists, recovering from the ravages of World War II. They strove to challenge and transgress the traditional dictums of art making, transport art into new spaces and dissolve boundaries between nature, art and technology, all with an optimistic enthusiasm and an unrestricted aesthetic. The ZERO movement gained momentum internationally and grew to include artists such as Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, Yayoi Kusama, Piero Manzoni and Jesús Rafael Soto, …