MAK Ying Tung: Almost Empty

MAK Ying Tung 麥影彤：Almost Empty

MAK Ying Tung
Almost Empty

27 June – 25 July 2014

Gallery EXIT is pleased to present "Almost Empty", Mak Ying Tung first solo exhibition with the gallery.

A deliberate emptiness sits at the heart of Mak Ying Tung’s Almost Empty - the exhibition revolves around a specific absence both corporeal and conceptual, dualistically exposing the material world within the dichotomy of the real and the unreal.

Intimating the symbolic, metaphorical, material and generative qualities of balloons, pumps and tubes, the works features in Almost Empty are altered in their form and function but meanwhile insisted to perform strange and bizarre tasks. Elaborately rich in sexual undertones, fragility and humor, the conceptually driven, performative sculptures and installations “nearly always reference or confront you with the figurative: its trace, its loss, its needs, its commercialism, its elimination.”

The works of Mak Ying Tung employ the internet-driven way of thinking from her generation. The artist conceives, appropriates and manipulates ideas, concept and their material-presentation with the same immediacy as color correction or image filter on Photoshop. There is an evident articulation of the visual finishing of her artworks on a premeditated and deliberate level. Incorporating the existing pool of attention-grabbing images disseminated online, these works sublimate sophisticated issues into accessible sets of symbols exploring spaces and possibilities provided by the properties of contemporary concerns.

Mak Ying Tung (b.1989) is educated in School of Creative Media of City University of Hong Kong. Her practice combines installation, performance and illustration, frequently dealing with the de-contextualization of everyday objects. Interested in discovering something unusual in the minutiae of life, Mak makes use of domestic objects and transfigures them into objects of eccentricity and anomalies.

麥影彤
《Almost Empty》

2014年6月27日至7月25日

安全口畫廊呈獻與麥影彤合作的第一個個展《Almost Empty》。

麥影彤個展《Almost Empty》的核心，彌漫著一股蓄意凝聚出來的空虛之感。展出的作品共同圍繞著一種獨特的缺失 — 一種既是實體又概念化的缺失，在真實和虛構這二元框架之內，雙重地呈現出物質世界的模態。

取材自氣球、打氣筒和喉管的象徵、比喻、物料以及其衍生性這種種特徵，《Almost Empty》的展出大大顛覆了作品原初的形式和功能，但同時又堅持繼續履行種種離奇古怪的行為。透過幽默的表達方式，這些概念主導的行為雕塑及裝置，無一不充斥著性、人性的脆弱等等的含意，「這些隱喻所遺下的、失去的、需要的、商業的、被刪除的，差不多經常把觀者聯繫起來，或帶來衝擊。」

麥影彤的作品滲透著一種屬於她年代的互聯網主導的思維模式。藝術家去理解不同的想法、運用概念和利用物料的呈現方式時，猶如使用Photoshop裡的彩色校正和圖像過濾器般直接。在視覺效果方面，她作品的陳述中有很顯著刻意預先構思的成份。藝術家從網上搜羅出眾的影像，在作品中把複雜的議題提昇至可觸及的符號，從當代議題的特徵中探索空間可成就的不同可能性。

麥影彤於香港城市大學創意媒體學院畢業。她的創作包括裝置、行為表演以及插圖，把日常物件去脈絡化。藝術家喜歡發掘平凡生活裡不尋常的一面，把不起眼的物件轉化成怪異之物。