Elah WONG Tsoi Wai 王采薈
Wild Awhile
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18 July – 22 August 2026
13/F, Gallery EXIT Gallery EXIT presents a solo exhibition by Elah WONG Tsoi Wai, ‘Wild Awhile’, featuring the artist’s latest paintings alongside a series of ceramic works created in collaboration with ceramicist Benny TO Kai On. For Wong, this year has unfolded as an open-ended process of exploration, with her practice attuned to the ebbs and flows of life. Her work evolves alongside life’s trajectory, guided by the impulses of the present moment. She approaches the canvas as a space of continual transformation; through layers of colour and repeated gestures of rubbing and erasing, images emerge, dissolve, and re-form. Deliberately relinquishing coherent narrative logic, she allows conflicting imagery to coexist freely—apples become intersecting antennae, while melancholic thoughts are distilled into spare, economical lines. Each mark serves as a truthful record of her thinking. The works in this exhibition reveal a distinctive visual language. A Song, for instance, is a song of blessing: its undulating curves evoke life’s journey, which, after its rises and falls, ultimately returns to its point of origin, while the painting itself loops through space like a suspended music player. Tomato is Life, Strawberry is Love Life responds to Frida Kahlo’s final 1954 work, Viva la Vida: where Kahlo celebrated life through the image of watermelon, Wong adopts tomatoes to symbolize vitality and strawberries to evoke pleasure, constructing a visual language of her own through intimate, personal symbols. The exhibition also extends into three-dimensional form. Wong and TO’s ceramic works depart from conventional ceramic practice, which often involves a single glaze firing; each piece in this series has undergone three firings. The process closely echoes Wong’s approach to painting: following intuition, building up layers gradually, and recording the subtle negotiations and exchanges between the two artists. Deliberately left open and unfinished, these works preserve space for continued transformation and interpretation. Elah WONG Tsoi Wai (b. 1999, Hong Kong) graduated in 2024 from the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University. As a Gen Z artist shaped by the digital age, she explores how individuals situate and define themselves within a technologically driven society. Her painting practice adopts a non-hierarchical, non-linear mode of thinking in response to the contemporary anxieties generated by fragmented online information. Working primarily with acrylic, she constructs multi-layered time and space across the canvas. She has participated in solo and group exhibitions, including the solo exhibition 'Unknown Unknowns' (Gallery EXIT, Hong Kong, 2025) and group exhibitions 'Art Zaai Rising' (Artbycrew, Hong Kong, 2025), 'West Bund Art & Design 2024' (Gallery EXIT, Shanghai, 2024), HKFOREWORD23 (10 Chancery Lane Gallery, Hong Kong, 2023), and 'Paperclip Truffle' (New Asia College Ch’ien Mu Library, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2023). The artist currently lives and works in Hong Kong. Benny TO Kai On (b. Hong Kong, 1994) graduated in 2021 from the Hong Kong Art School’s Department of Fine Arts, majoring in ceramics. Working through an approach he terms “speculative archaeology”, TO produces fictive ancient artefacts to reimagine the relationships between history, religion and popular culture. His inspiration stems from the art of prehistoric and early civilisations: ancient peoples drew rational and spiritual enlightenment from nature, developing religious myths and, through the creation of totems and idols, transforming their deepest wishes and fantasies into tangible forms. The artist likewise recognises a comparable source of nourishment and insight in contemporary popular culture. To’s works have been included in solo and group exhibitions organised by various art institutions. His selected solo exhibitions including ‘Dimensional Civilization Archeology Project : Chapter Of Nature’ (Mist Gallery, Hong Kong, 2025), ‘Dimensional Civilization Archeology Project 2.0’ (Art Basel Hong Kong, Para Site, 2022), ‘ARCHAEOLOGY IN RPG vol.1’ (Yrellag Gallery, Hong Kong, 2021), Recent group exhibition participations include ‘N.O.C.I’ (SC Gallery, Hong Kong, 2024), ‘Marginal Notes’ (Landmark South UG Showcase, Hong Kong, 2023). The artist currently lives and works in Hong Kong. |