10 Chancery Lane Gallery is proud to present HKFOREWORD15, an exhibition showcasing recent works by seven young Hong Kong art graduates. Now in its fourth year, the HKFOREWORD series, organized by 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, aims to actively promote and strengthen relations between the new generation of contemporary artists in Hong Kong and local art institutions.
Artists in the show are recent graduates from Hong Kong Art School, Hong Kong Baptist University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Savannah College of Art and Design in Hong Kong.
Brandon Pak Kin CHAN (b.1986, Hong Kong)
A wall of bricks made out of clay and newspaper, the installation 24 Hours by Brandon Pak Kin CHAN is a visually arresting work. The young talent has spent over a year deconstructing the relationship between time and space to explore the perishable nature of ‘value’ in today’s world.
Artist Statement:
Since May of 2013, everyday, after I have read and digested a daily newspaper, I molded it into a brick. If I could not finish it on that day, then it would be skipped.
A newspaper concretely records the daily information of a city, but also unilaterally. Its frail expiry date exists only “today”. Within the process, day-by-day, all the memories, contents, value, meaning... are washed as if they had never existed. What has it deconstructed? And what has it built? The only thing that can be seen is the marks of living.
Lok Man DAAI (b.1992, Hong Kong)
Lok Man DAAI treats his artistic journey as a metaphor to the cold and lonesome path one must take in life. His installation, featuring pencil on paper and wood, is a mental jail, and reflects the agony of being in a new environment.
Artist Statement:
‘Solitary’ is about the relationship between an individual and the outside world. It tries to express repressed emotion through the numbing repetition of ripples, which depict an ocean, and to construct a mental space without being harassed, thereby seeking tranquility and mental rest.
Argus Tsz Leong FONG (b.1991, China)
Argus FONG’s fascination with memories and understanding the human condition has led him to create visually stimulating paintings that are both mystical and intriguing. Night Talk 1 depicts construction workers resting on makeshift beds. Fong creates layers of contrasts; a piece of wood is used as the backdrop to a scene referencing Hong Kong’s constant building work. Metallic colors and straight lines are juxtaposed with the natural color and grain of the wood. In Remain, the artist draws on memories of his hometown, depicting a partially imagined landscape that is deeply personal to the artist’s life.
Artist Statement:
When one experiences silence alone, sensing one’s own existence and confusion, the feeling is like being naked to oneself, everything is too frank and no one can escape from this. Obsolete walls, rough ceilings, and small cracks enlarge and expand in front of our eyes. This is a real and strange world. The world revolves around memories derived from our own, building up with pieces of experiences. We may be foreigners, in search of a space of our own through living.
Frankie Lemon LEUNG (b. 1985, Hong Kong)
Come to An Understanding is a mixed media installation that was inspired by artist Frankie Lemon Leung’s experience as a schoolteacher and of working with adolescents. The three wooden tables have been installed with video devices to reveal the emotional rollercoaster of young people and their troubles in love, life and school.
Artist Statement:
I am a school discipline teacher therefore I usually meet adolescents with behavior problems. They are dominated by desire, confused in the present moment and are also scared of the future. So, I swap clothes and secrets with them, to study their growth deeply. Then I create idle school tables with video to question the effectiveness of education, and also to reflect the youth’s contradiction coming from family, friends, social atmosphere and the virtual network. The work features with documental images, sound and installation, to bring audience to the whole living world by exploring individual lives.
Jerry NG (b.1992, Hong Kong)
Inspired by social issues and injustice, artist Ng Sek Hin uses media installation to portray the lives of ordinary people living in Kowloon City, Hong Kong in his work City. The viewer is faced with three stories of Kowloon City citizens which are all true stories collected by the artist as he wandered the streets. The video records still motions seen in Kowloon City with added effects that continuously change in order to reflect the emotions of the text.
Artist Statement:
The City is moving forward, leaving the old days behind. How should we make peace with our memories?
‘City’ uses community art as a starting point. I interviewed more than ten citizens in the shadows of Kowloon City, hoping that the stories of these people can provoke our thoughts towards the city and, moreover, the “greatness” behind Hong Kong.
Fei TSE (b.1990, Hong Kong)
TSE Fei’s fascination with time and meaning has led him to explore the creative impulses that occur in the mundane orders of daily routines. Using the photocopiers at his university, he created Void, a series of ink printed on Chinese paper to explore issues of identity and the repetitions of our lives.
Artist Statement:
It is no mountains, nor is it waters. It is what it is. We normally understand patterns on Chinese Xuan paper this way: those areas painted with ink are mountains, while those left blank are water. This is true according to the books too. It all began with an ordinary piece of blank paper. While Ziyou asked what filial piety was, I asked what a piece of blank paper was. I turned to those wise men who had read countless books before – the 46 photocopiers in the 7 libraries at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. I photocopied a piece of blank paper. Using the image resulted, I made yet another photocopy. The same process was repeated until a portrait of ink diffusion gradually appeared on the blank paper, revealing the wise men’s answer: the illusion of mountains and water, or the classical elegance of the Five Dynasties Period, especially when the outcome was presented on Xuan paper. Everything is constrained by the delusion of perception and existence. You are constrained by your very perception when you think, and I by my own existence when I made the photocopies. That is all it is about.
Jesemy Main-Hsin WANG (b.1993, Taiwan)
Aurum Pisces is motivated by Jesemy’s curiosity about individuality, and the loss of it with the passage of time. Using the photographic works of Jacques Henri Lartigue, known for his photographs of Parisian female fashion models, the artist composes her bizarre narratives that create a separation between the viewer and the original image. By imposing the goldfish on the heads of the models, the artist reinforces the idea that the original images of the people themselves do not hold any significance for today’s viewer.
Artist Statement:
I am inspired by the writing of the French philosopher and theorist Roland Barthes’s eulogy to his late Mother.
The question that often arises from photographs or in this case historical photographs: why do any of these people matter to us? To us it does not matter at all, it is simply a fragment of the past. That’s why people are turned into goldfish. They do not matter to any of us. We do not know them nor do they know us. Just like a “Goldfish”.