All posts tagged: Charlotte Chang

Lee Kit

Published by Artomity Magazine

Something You Can’t Leave Behind By Charlotte Chang The introduction to Lee Kit’s first solo show with Massimo De Carlo Hong Kong, Something You Can’t Leave Behind, opens with a lengthy quote containing sentence fragments and abrupt imperatives that is at once baffling and transcendent. After a series of disjointed declarative statements – such as “there is a movie in every corner”, “a bus ride might make you smile” and “our time has gone” – Lee commands viewers to “mute the voiceover”, before ending by saying “something you can’t leave behind”, the show’s titular reference to elusive and ineffable but persistent traces of life and memory. The intimate narrative of the show, composed of eight site-specific works with complex combinations of projections and Lee’s characteristic mixed-media paintings and drawings, is as much a stream of consciousness as the quote. While the show’s “something” seems intertwined with Lee’s individual consciousness, manifest in ghostly imprints of mundane objects, disembodied gestures and idiosyncratic expletives, the multifarious interplay between tangibility and intangibility, light and shadow, sharpness and blurriness, and contrasting scales brings out something more universal: that, in myriad ways, …

Adrian Wong

Published by Artomity Magazine

The Tiger Returns to the Mountain By Charlotte Chang Reconstituting a Palimpsest of Hong Kong History Chinese-American artist Adrian Wong’s site-specific installation The Tiger Returns to the Mountain, presented at chi art space by the K11 Art Foundation, takes the former Tiger Balm Garden as its locus of imagination in deconstructing Hong Kong’s cultural history. The historic garden, on whose site a luxury residential complex now stands, is a palimpsest of Hong Kong’s cultural history — a site whose every reincarnation throughout the previous decades, whether as private residence, theme park or repository of psychedelic statuary, has effaced its own past while leaving indelible marks, tracing the city’s existence from colonial times to the present. The title alludes to a Chinese expression that means “allowing someone dangerous to roam again”, but the titular tiger’s identity is left ambiguous. As viewers navigate the large-scale work, which mixes multi-sensory and Chinese architectural elements, they are invited to consider this question while engaging with Hong Kong’s layered history from different vantage points. Artomity: How does the installation take advantage of chi art space’s …

Tung Wing Hong & Phoebe Hui

Published by Artomity Magazine

X+Y By Charlotte Chang At X+Y, a dual solo exhibition of local artists Tung Wing Hong and Phoebe Hui that ran until October 30, two large-scale, mechanically intricate installations transform the chi art space into an immersive funhouse, with slowly rotating plasma screens hanging in mid-air and a pair of inviting, adult-size swings. Swinging on the latter trigger ripples in a pool of water that at first seem disembodied, and musical notes in the sequence of a well-known Tchaikovsky waltz. The show, part of the As Far As Near exhibition series presented by the K11 Art Foundation, displays Tung’s In Between (2016) and Hui’s Process with body, water & amp; pendulums (2009-2011, 2016) in a fluid continuum. Because of the sheer scale and mechanical complexity of Process, Hui had not had a chance to show it in Hong Kong before. In the intimate gallery, the placement of the two works without partitions highlights the artists’ common impulse of drawing on mechanics and technology to allow viewers to reconstruct self-awareness and spatial awareness. With their sentimental movements of slow …

A Vision in ink

Published by Artomity Magazine

Following the success of the inaugural Ink Asia fair last year, expectations for the second edition are high. Artomity talked to its director Calvin Hui about the cultural aspirations and market vision driving the world’s first art fair dedicated to modern and contemporary ink. By Charlotte Chang What was the concept behind creating a fair specialising in ink art?  From the beginning I was not only concerned about the market but also strove to define a mission. I have long been a collector and lover of contemporary ink, because I think ink is the most important language of our cultural tradition. But I felt that resources in this field in China were often not put to good use. The DNA of ink culture – its core spirit – is in our blood as Chinese people. I knew that this shared cultural understanding would allow a fair dedicated to ink to build a very strong connection with the audience. I believed that, coupled with the steadily increasing popularity of ink art in the region, commercial success would follow. How does Ink …