10 Chancery Lane Gallery invites you to join us on a mid-summer night for the exhibition opening of, Discordia, by five young Hong Kong artists Carla Chan, Chloe Cheuk, Chong Wai, Jasper Fung & Iriz Yuen.
Discordia is the first part of a series of exhibitions and programs organized by 10 Chancery Lane Gallery in its HKFOREWORD series, launched in order to support the development of contemporary art in Hong Kong. The exhibition will showcase our selection of works by five young Hong Kong artists, evolving around contexts that look into the rhythm and dynamics, intimacy and tension of order and disorder in various aspects of life. The combination of these rythmic works create a certain tension of harmony and disharmony with a magnetic curiosity.
Artists in the show are recent graduates from School of Creative Media at City University and Academy of Visual Arts of Hong Kong Baptist University.
Carla Chan (b.1989 Hong Kong)
Carla Chan Ho-Choi is a young media artist based in Hong Kong where she completed her bachelor degree from the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. Chan works in a variety of media including video, installation, photography and interactive media. Her works, minimal in style and form, often toy with the blurred boundaries between reality and illusion, figure and abstraction, while at the same time provide a space that create a form of micro story-telling.
As I Flow Gently Inside You is a video performance and installation that explores the intimacy between bodies in a situated environments. Two strangers are asked to stand naked facing each other in a small container. The two participants can act freely under the given situation set by the artist but they are not allowed to touch each other directly.
The subtle exchanges of glances, breaths, smells and sounds made during the performance become a kind of micro drama between the two participants, creating an unusual tension that is at once erotic, oppressive and disorienting. As I Flow Gently Inside You aims to evoke a feeling of sensual claustrophobia that pervades just underneath human intimacy.
Chloe Cheuk (b.1989 Hong Kong)
Chloe Cheuk Sze-Wing is a new media artist currently based in Hong Kong. She holds a BA (Hons) in Creative Media at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. Her work crosses a wide range of media to include installation, photography and video. She is interested in exploring electronics, images and video as well as mixed media in order to investigate, observe and discover how she relates both to her surroundings and her society, often with a sarcastic and critical approach. She first conceives the idea for a new project based on an artistic concept and then starts doing research and experiments to find the potential tools to create and engineer her ideas.
The Burst of Pleasure is an electronic installation of a birthday celebration setting. Centered in the room stands a birthday cake above which a balloon is being inflated slowly. On top of the cake is a candle with a pin in it. As the balloon inflates it nearly touches the pin and then deflates slowly. As tension builds and is released watching the balloon inflate and then deflate, a computerized random setting has been installed to allow the balloon to touch the pin one time a day causing a burst with confetti fireworks. The sudden burst into cheers is like a pleasure released from the pressure, yet at the same time one feels a slight loss and depression after the climax is reached and the longing vanishes. The process of building up the excitement and relief holds the audience’s breath and emotion and serves as a certain art therapy.
Jasper Fung (b.1988 Hong Kong)
Jasper Fung Tsun-Yin is a Hong Kong based performer, musician, sound artist and new media artist. His work intertwines installation, documentary, music and sonic composition that significantly arouses introspection into today’s discourteous and coarse world alongside the rapid elimination of social interactiveness. Fung’s work explores the terrain over classical, alternative, sound and space, rooted in his determination to challenge any models of traditional discipline.
I Am Not Playing Violin is a kinetic sound installation, which makes use of a series of abandoned violins to compose automatic music. In this work, programmed servomotors provide oscillations to each violin. From gentle to destructive crashing moments, contact microphones attached to each violin capture these moments and amplify them through the speakers. By this method, the music is not only generated by the string, but also by the crashing bodies of the violins. The audience is able to experience both a specific way of listening while the work creates a multidimensional visual impact.
In 2012, Fung received a BA (Hons) from Critical Intermedia Laboratory, School of Creative Media of the City University of Hong Kong. He coorganized the project DIODE, which is a platform to explore the unique experiences in sound art performance that featured performances and workshops.
Iriz Yuen (b.1989 Hong Kong)
Iriz Yuen is a poet, sound artist and conceptual artist. She graduated from the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. Yuen is an artist of process. Her practice revolves around the ideas of obsession and addiction. Drawing inspiration from her daily life observation, she reveals the sub-conscious self as one that seeks comfort through repetition visually and audibly, resembling a state of hypnosis. She is curious about her identity of being an artist and is constantly trying to explore her art practice through the practice of art making.
To her, the process of putting stickers on paper is similar to a paint brush working on canvas. Through the process, she discovered that placing the stickers repetitively turned into an obsession and she indulged in the nature of the act. For this exhibition, she will transform the work Just Want To Make Sure Everything Is Your Favorite into a wall installation. Also in the gallery, Style Practice No.1 is playing on the TV screens, showing a metronomes “orchestra” that aims to synchronise with the sound of the traffic lights in the streets of Hong Kong. The metronomes and the traffic lights carry their own rhythm but despite this, a carefully calculated mechanism works inside of them, the music has become totally random and chaotic.
Chong Wai (b.1990 Hong Kong)
Inspired by a quote by Hong Kong artist Pak Sheung Chuen on the internet*, young Hong Kong artist Chong Wai produced four video works to understand the distance, intimacy and boundary in the relationship of two persons. He had invited his friends to participate in this very intimate touch with him. The video work beautifully visualizes the intimacy between two people through the eye lashes “kissing”. While the two performers try and reach their closest possible distance, the uncomfortable feeling from their blinking lashes actually causes them to push themselves away from each other. The performers nearness brings them to think of how close they might be not only in proximity but also in relation to their thoughts and feelings.
Chong Wai works with diverse art forms, performance art, site-specific installation, public art and multimedia. He is perceptive and insightful in pairing an intuitive concept from living spaces and relationships amongst people. Chong recently graduated in BA(Hons) in Viusal Arts from Academy of Visual Art in Hong Kong Baptist University. Chong was awarded the first runner-up prize in the 2012 Hong Kong Contemporary Art Award.
* Pak Sheung Chuen. (2012, March 22). “你讓你和她的眼睛的距離，接近過自己雙眼的距離。” (“The distance between your eyes and hers are closer than the distance between your own two eyes”) Retrieved August 1, 2012, from http://www.facebook.com/paksheungchuen