KWAN Sheung Chi + WONG Wai Yin: "But is it Art?" "I know but I don't know."  
關尚智+黃慧妍 :「但是這是藝術嗎？」「我知道可是我不知道。」

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KWAN Sheung Chi + WONG Wai Yin
"But is it Art?"
"I know but I don't know."

18 October - 16 November 2013

W: Our exhibition is titled "But is it Art?" "I know but I don't know.", right?

K: Right.

W: What do you think of my proposed artworks so far?

K: There shouldn't be any problems.

W: I especially like the mosaic work you suggested for me to make. How is your piece coming along?

K: No progress so far, I don't know if there is any point to it. I wonder if I can draw out some core issues within art from my trail of thoughts rather than to casually conjure a concept.

W: To pour one's thoughts out without reservation is already really powerful.

K: But ultimately, would it be better to have a completed work or to simply verbalize the concept? I don't really know which of the two I should follow.

W: If you ask me about art, I can only say that it is a personal interest; can't really help let alone give an opinion.

K: That is also an opinion and every opinion is subjective.
True. 

W: But I am often an indecisive person, my advices come with a lot of risk.

K: Ideas are unbounded. In that way, I feel that I should incorporate everything I hear and see into my artworks. For instance, in Pak Sheung Chuen's latest work, he simply wrote down his thoughts without realising them and I would like to retell them all, would that count as art?

W: No.

K: Would it not?


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About the artists:

KWAN Sheung Chi and WONG Wai Yin regularly collaborate on their artistic projects, the first being EVERYTHING GOES WRONG FOR THE POOR COUPLE, a 34 hour-long performance over the course of 5 days at ART HK 2010; and had gone on to present TO DEFIND THE CORE VALUES IS THE CORE OF THE CORE VALUES, a performative and audience participatory project, in Mobile M+: Yau Ma Tei organised by the West Kowloon Cultural District.

Many of Kwan's work take the form of self-training without seemingly advancing. This on-going wrestle with the duality of success and failure, achievement and defeat, calculation and chance, underlies much of his recent practice and even his daily life. Through his work, we are invited to be witnesses of a life and to come up with exit strategies from our dualistic mind-set.

Wong Wai Yin's practice is a persistent enquiry into what constitutes as art. Looking at the struggle between reality and imitation, her ambiguous pairings of everyday objects are appropriated as repositories of hidden, multi-layered meanings.

關尚智+黃慧妍
「但是這是藝術嗎？」
「我知道可是我不知道。」

2013年10月18日至11月16日

黃： 「我們的展覽叫做"But is it Art?" "I know but I don't know."，是不是？」

關： 「對。」 

黃： 「您覺得暫時我想做的作品如何？」 

關： 「應該沒有問題。」 

黃： 「特別喜歡您叫我做的那件馬賽克。您那件想成怎樣？」 

關： 「還沒有甚麼進展，不知道有沒有意思。我在想是否可能在這些想法中歸納出一些對於藝術比較核心的問題，而不只是一些隨便想起的概念。」 

黃： 「把自己一直以來的想法都傾囊而出已經很厲害。」 

關： 「究竟是完成了的作品好，還是單純把概念說出來比較好？我也不肯定我是屬於哪一種。」 

黃： 「您問我關於作品的事，我覺得只是我個人喜好，其實幫不了甚麼，也談不上意見。」 

關： 「那也是意見，而且所有意見都是個人的。」 

黃： 「是的。不過我不是時常都很肯定的人。所以給意見風險很高。」 

關： 「概念是無限的，我覺得這樣的話應該把所有曾經聽到看到的都包含進來。比如說，(白)雙全近來的作品都是只把想法寫出來，我想把他的這些全複製過來再說一遍，那算不算是藝術？」 

黃： 「不算。」 

關： 「不算嗎？」


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藝術家簡介：

關尚智和黃慧妍經常共同創作，第一次是在2010年香港國際藝術展的五天內現場演出歷時34小時的《貧賤夫妻百事哀》；並於2012年西九文化區主辦的「 M+ 進行：油麻地」呈獻集觀眾參與和行為藝術於一身的《捍衛核心價值是最核心的核心價值》計劃。

很多關尚智的作品都是在展示一種看似沒有個人提升的自我培訓行動。這些作品甚至他的日常生活裡，都是建基於「成功與失敗」、「成就與挫折」、「計算與偶然」的種種雙重性中兩者的相互角力。他的作品邀請你見證一場人生、思索如何在二元化的定框內尋找出路。

黃慧妍的創作持續探討藝術的定義。在現實與模仿的掙扎之間，曖昧的日常物配對就成為隱藏及多層意思的寶庫。