All posts tagged: Katherine Volk

Xu Zhen

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The Glorious / Perrotin / Hong Kong / Mar 25 – May 11 / Katherine Volk / Walk into Perrotin, and a towering sculpture commands the middle of the room, surrounded by two large-scale series from Xu Zhen’s solo exhibition The Glorious. The juxtaposition of media and styles typifies Xu’s exploration of cultural exchange, authenticity, history, globalisation and capitalism. The prolific artist founded MadeIn Company in 2009 and creates work both individually and through the collective practice of the group. In Eternity – Northern Qi Painted Bodhisattva, River God Ilissos from West Pediment of Parthenon (2018), from Xu’s Eternity series, a replica of a Northern Qi (AD 550-577) figure is posed upside down on top of a replica of a Classical Greek sculpture, with the head and arms removed from the former to match the latter. The two headless, handless bodies are seemingly defenceless, conjoined at the necks in an unwilling but inevitable clash of cultures. The sculptures depict Gods and the Buddha as figures elevated beyond mankind; comically connected, they satirically confront the fluidity and struggles of humanity, globalisation and relationships between ideologies from the east and …

Marcel Dzama

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Crossing the Line / David Zwirner / Hong Kong / Jan 22 – Mar 9 / Katherine Volk / If artists are historians of our times, Marcel Dzama represents the present. Canadian-born, New York-based Dzama references the contemporary climate in the US under Donald Trump’s presidency; this was paired with influences from elsewhere, in particular Hong Kong, for his recent show at David Zwirner, which spanned both floors of the gallery. Dzama departs dramatically from his earlier approach of sparse characters on plain paper, with his style morphing into colourful, large-scale works that are bold and chaotic but meaningful. The new approach was influenced by the work and looser approach to creation of his friend Raymond Pettibon, as well as Dzama’s time living in and visiting large cities such as New York and Hong Kong, and the vibrancy and crowded energy of these places. The neon lights of Hong Kong aren’t Dzama’s only inspiration; the city’s iconic horse racing also features as a prominent theme across multiple works, including Ghost riders (or Watch out he don’t fall on …

Rei Hayama, Takashi Makino

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Katherine Volk / The Pearl of Tailorbird / Memento Stella / Empty Gallery / Hong Kong / Dec 15 – Jan 26 / Katherine Volk / Two solo exhibitions, The Pearl of the Tailorbird by Rei Hayama and Memento Stella by Takashi Makino, took over the entire two-floor space of Empty Gallery. While both employ film, they provoke vastly different feelings and reactions. Spread across two floors, The Pearl of the Tailorbird took viewers on a journey. Winding through the top floor of the gallery’s iconic dark void were walls spiralling inwards like a maze; as visitors navigated the barriers, it felt as if they needed Ariadne’s silver thread to guide them out of the miniature labyrinth. This searching and disconnection are symbolic of Hayama’s exploration of the human condition alienated from nature. The layout itself was a structure within a structure, where perceptions were altered, and the spiral also alluded to other manmade or mythical cultural constructions of disorder, such as the Tower of Babel, from a biblical tale in which God punishes people’s attempts to build …

Jin Meyerson

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Before the Beginning and After the End / By Katherine Volk / Before the Beginning and After the End at Pearl Lam Galleries is a culmination of what Jin Meyerson describes as his “greatest hits and misses”, comparable to a rock star compiling their chart toppers alongside little-known B-sides. Spanning seven years, they contain hints at his accumulated perspective and the defining experiences of his evolution as an artist. Meyerson was born in Incheon, South Korea, and spent his first years in an orphanage. At the age of five he was adopted by a Jewish-Swedish family and raised in Minnesota. His upbringing was just the start of his multicultural experience; as he jokes, “I was multicultural before the term was invented”. First moving to New York, then Paris, then setting up a studio in Hong Kong and moving back to South Korea, Meyerson’s narrative transcends borders and speaks to a universal viewpoint. He has a relationship with images, aesthetically psychedelic but digitally sourced, that “always comes from multiple points of entry – and it has to, otherwise I feel …

Huang Yongping, Shen Yuan

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Hong Kong Foot  Tang Contemporary Art Hong Kong Dec 20, 2017 – Jan 27 Katherine Volk Huang Yongping and Shen Yuan don’t avoid provocative subjects, and their work often creates controversy. Late last year, for example, Huang’s work was topical when his piece Theatre of the World, featuring lizards consuming insects as a metaphor for human violence, helped provide the title of the exhibition Art and China after 1989: Theatre of the World at New York’s Solomon R Guggenheim Museum. After arguments between animal cruelty activists and proponents of artistic freedom, his work was ultimately pulled from the show. Neither did the pair shy away from contemporary discourse in the four works they made specifically for the opening of Tang Contemporary Art’s new space at H Queens. The title, Hong Kong Foot, refers to the fungal infection more often known as athlete’s foot, which was historically a common local condition among settlers, missionaries, soldiers and refugees. As Huang says, it has now been redefined as the way Hong Kong infects those who come to the city with its characteristics. Central to the exhibition was Huang’s …

Liang Ban

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Diary of a Pioneer  de Sarthe Gallery Hong Kong Jan 27 – Mar 17 An unearthly purple glow fills the room as a rumble of thunder emanates from the back of the gallery. Consisting of four new works, Liang Ban’s immersive first solo exhibition at de Sarthe Hong Kong questions our relationship to wilderness and the absurdities of human civilisation. The source of the glow is Neon Wilderness: Nazca Lines (2018), which as the name suggests alludes to the Nazca Lines in Peru, geoglyphs scratched into the earth nearly 2,000 years ago that have survived due to the area’s dry climate and minimal human interference – until a truck driver damaged them by driving across them the same week Liang’s exhibition opened. The depictions of animals, plants and shapes went largely unnoticed until they were discovered in the 1920s by a hiking archaeologist, and became increasingly famous with the growth of aviation. Through his use of glowing paint, Liang recreates the symbols on the gallery walls, commenting on the mystery of how they appeared. Though widely thought to be created …

Alex Prager

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Lehmann Maupin  Hong Kong Jan 18 – Mar 17 Katherine Volk For Alex Prager’s second solo exhibition in Hong Kong, the Los Angeles-based artist demonstrates through staged film and photography that a familiar truth lies beneath fiction. To the left of the entrance sits Prager’s sculpture Hand Model (detail) (2017) of a bent finger with a long, red-painted nail. Next to the manicured finger is Hand Model (2017), a framed, enlarged image of a whole outstretched hand against a muted background. The cropping from body to hand, and from hand to finger, is reminiscent of advertising practices of enlarging and editing to fit ideals and specifications. Advertising is further emphasised when the same image is used in Star Shoes (2017). Hidden in the corner of the large-scale photograph, an advertisement appears on the back of a model’s magazine prop. It questions the importance of imagery and detail in our daily lives and how the smallest image or the biggest billboard can have an effect on our consciousness. In the other portion of the gallery, Prager’s single-channel video Applause (2016) plays against the white-walled backdrop. …

Toshio Matsumoto

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Everything Visible is Empty Empty Gallery Hong Kong Sep 9 – Nov 18, 2017 Katherine Volk Visitors to the new Toshio Matsumoto (1932-2017) show at Empty Gallery were immersed in the artist’s experimental visuals as soon as the elevator doors to the gallery opened. Pulsating, coloured waves radiated from a central void and filled the opposite wall, while the entrance space was filled with cosmic sounds. White Hole (1979) simultaneously startled and mesmerised, taking the viewer on a journey into the void. This captivating start to the exhibition was only a taster of what was behind the next door. The gallery consulted with the late artist’s archive to present a retrospective of his newly restored work. The dark space, enclosed between black walls, ceilings and floors, was the perfect setting to display the dynamic aesthetic of the post-war image maker. Empty Gallery brought together a selection of the artist’s documentaries and short experimental films from 1960 to 1979, each featuring drastically different subjects, but connected through their enquiries into the complicated conditions of a changing Japanese society. Phantom (1975) and The Song of Stone (1963) …