Igor CHAN Chun Hin 陳俊軒 Angie CHOI Nga Sze 蔡雅思 Dave CHOW Yui Wang 周睿宏 Natalie CHU Lok Ting 朱樂庭 Lewis LEE Kam Ching 李錦青 Benny TO Kai On 陶啟安 Ella WONG Tsoi Wai 王采薈 Michelle YIM Suet Wing 嚴雪咏 YUNG Chung Kong 翁松江
9 September – 14 October, 2023 Opening: 9 September (Sat) 2 - 5 pm
Gallery EXIT presents ‘A Guide to Fragmented Spaces’, a group exhibition of new works by nine young artists, covering a wide range of media including painting, installation and sculpture. Using their own experiences as a starting point, the artists reconstruct all kinds of illusory speculative spaces with the visual symbols and rules found in the real world. Most of the artists are exhibiting in a gallery for the first time.
Igor CHAN Chun Hin works mainly with painting and installation, and his works revolve around his observations and queries about the puzzling scenes and objects in the city. The major motif in the paintings in this exhibition is the traffic cones that are abandoned and scattered around the city, large parts of which the artist leaves blank, weakening the object’s presence as a sign of warning and questioning its meaning when it is not needed by the society.
For Angie CHOI Nga Sze, long-exposure photography is a way to preserve time; roads, cars and light trails are constant motifs in her works. The ceramic paintings in this exhibition are about dreams and disasters. Choi places cars from the real world in various imaginary spaces, building large swathes of bright colour blocks using porcelain mixed with colour stain to create a unique visual effect that evokes her own inner fantasy world.
The works of Natalie CHU Lok Ting focus on the conservation of cultural heritage in modern society, for which the artist develops a demi-archaeology and research-based approach. In her Lacuna series, fragments of cultural relics or old objects are combined with white cement, which at first seems to ‘restore’ the missing parts of the objects, but in fact draws attention to the void. The viewer has to fill in the gaps through his or her own subjective imagination, and reconstruct the once complete past with the remaining clues.
Dave CHOW Yui Wang displays and distils his everyday experiences by appropriating, transforming, and assembling ready-made objects and images. Through repetition, two sets of blade works transform and confuse our general impression of the industrial object. A hair-thin gap separates the fine sharp blades, while more than 3,000 gaps are neatly arranged to create a special blackness, unemotional and unique like the codes of the blades.
Through paintings and installations, Lewis LEE Kam Ching narrates her childhood experience of travelling back and forth between Hong Kong and Shenzhen. In a playful and surreal manner, Lee paints the scenery of the border between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, responding to generations of family traumas in her exploration of identity and construction of a worldview of her own.
Benny TO Kai On is inspired by the totems and statues in prehistoric and early civilisations, as well as iconic works of sci-fi animation, Tokusatsu and movies in popular culture. Using ceramics, a medium associated with historical evidence, to reproduces the mass produced forms of modern industry. Hence the works are like the archaeological discovery of the present era by future humans, recording the collective spiritual outlook of the millennial generation.
A member of the Generation Z, Ella WONG Tsoi Wai often considers how human beings should live in the future technological society, and looks for the answer in painting. In the exhibited new works, Wong paints a dim room where even the lights are black. Using multiple layers of contrasting colours, she creates heavy, superimposed textures on the canvas, a three-dimensional space of seeing and being seen.
The works of Michelle YIM Suet Wing revolve around the gaps and damaged parts in the buildings from real life and the resulting associations. Based on different scenes, such as the sewage outlet on the wall, peeling concrete facade, and garden fence with gaps, Yim creates grotesque, colourful, toy-like fantasy objects by ceramic casting and grouting. Through these playful works, the artist reveals the absurdity of everyday life.
YUNG Chung Kong’s paintings illustrate fictional scenes where cities and wilderness meet. Rendered in monochrome with meticulous and dense brushwork, Yung creates a desolate space on the pictorial surface. Symbolic objects such as boats, withered plants, and wooden horses often appear isolated and dilapidated in the paintings, pointing to certain deserted spaces full of past memories, leaving the viewer to wonder at this undefined space.
