Hong Kong—Pearl Lam Galleries is presenting Absorption as a Way of Seeing, featuring works by eight contemporary artists: Kim Tschang-Yeul, Kenny Wong, Sinta Tantra, Luke Heng, Studio Swine, Li Tianbing, Gonkar Gyatso and Thukral & Tagra.

ABSORPTION AS A WAY OF SEEING at Pearl Lam Galleries

Kim Tschang-Yeul, a prolific Korean artist well known for his “water drop” paintings, has been one of the most influential figures in modern art history. Kim’s “water drop” paintings speak a language that amalgamates the discourses around photorealism and abstract expressionism, situating themselves in an ambiguous space between reality and the abstract. According to Kim, he does not interpret his subject as realistic depictions of actual water drops, but “idealistic” ones. Kim also remarked that the continued act of painting water drops helps him erase painful and traumatic memories of the tragedy of the Korean War, which he witnessed and experienced first-hand. In a way, the incessant act of painting water drops served as a therapeutic tool for him, and it draws a closer relation to surrealism and spirituality than the Western philosophical perceptions of “reality”.

ABSORPTION AS A WAY OF SEEING at Pearl Lam Galleries

Kenny Wong was born in 1987 in Hong Kong. Wong’s works explore the delicate relationship between daily experiences and perceptual stimulations by hybridising analogue and digital representations. Wong is interested in exploring visual patterns, motions, and sound textures, as well as presenting works in the form of computational kinetic sculptures. Wong actively works as a collaborating artist, multimedia designer, mechanical engineer/designer, and art researcher.

London-based British artist Sinta Tantra, is well regarded for her site-specific murals and installations in the public realm. These include works for the Southbank Centre, Liverpool Biennial, the Royal British Society of Sculptors, and Transport for London. Among Tantra’s most notable works is a permanent landmark commission for Canary Wharf completed for the 2012 Olympics—a 300-metre-long painted bridge stretching over the water in the heart of London’s business district. Recent public art commissions in 2015 include Newnham College, University of Cambridge and the newly built “tech city” of Songdo, South Korea.

ABSORPTION AS A WAY OF SEEING at Pearl Lam Galleries

Born in 1987, Singaporean artist Luke Heng is interested in the dialectics between painting, object, and picture making. His earlier practice revolved around the conceptualization and physical manifestation of painting, with his works often responding to the history of painting while drawing from various other art forms to influence his approach and process. His latest works assimilate ideas of liminality, impermanence, and transcendent space, fortifying his quiet evocations with an unadulterated presence. Heng’s practice is guided by his interest in Traditional Chinese Medicine, stemming from the fact that he comes from a family of Chinese physicians. Yin-yang philosophies govern his thoughts and judgments during his painting process, guiding his manipulation of different elements in his works to maintain a certain sense of visual harmony. In recent years, Heng’s works have been developing in two distinct trajectories with the first being his more traditional oil on linen works that engage on a more spiritual level with the process of painting and its results, and the second being the more conceptual thread that emphasizes materiality, the process of materialization, and the perception of painting. Works belonging to the latter include his recent experimentations with paraffin wax and beeswax to create translucent “paintings” that reveal the physical structures that hold form.

ABSORPTION AS A WAY OF SEEING at Pearl Lam Galleries

Studio Swine is co-founded by Azusa Murakami and Alexander Groves. Azusa graduated from the Bartlett School of Architecture and Alexander from the Ruskin School of Fine Art Oxford before both gaining an MA in Design Products at the Royal College of Art. Studio Swine explores design through material innovation and creating new sustainable systems whilst placing an equal importance on aesthetics, believing that desire is the greatest agent of change.

Born in 1974, in the southern province of Guilin, China, Tianbing Li moved to Paris at the

age of 22 to study at the École des Beaux-Arts. Here he came in contact with a wealth of

visual and cultural resources and formal histories. His compelling biography informs Tianbing Li 's poetic childhood portraits and we see it in its most vivid expression in 2006 with the introduction of an imagined brother to his painterly repertoire. Later works depict the artist accompanied by a host of brothers and playmates, which have come to form a complete yet entirely ‘imagined' family album. On a personal level the paintings offer an intimate portrait of a fantasized childhood, where fiction and fantasy seamlessly merge. On a far wider reaching scale, the work articulates the shared loss of a generation who grew up under an authoritative dictate exercised at its most personal level. Li’s compositions interweave the dualities present in China today: East and West, communism and capitalism, ancient culture and modern consumerism.

ABSORPTION AS A WAY OF SEEING at Pearl Lam Galleries

Gonkar Gyatso is a Tibetan-born British artist. Gonkar Gyatso’s work comes out of a fascination with material and pop culture along with a desire to bring equal attention to the mundane as well as the extraordinary, the imminent, and the superfluous. These contradictions are often found in the same piece. His work can be very silly, uncanny, and even ironic and at the same time comes out of concerns that are shaping our times. As his own experience has been one that reflects a kind of hybridity and transformation, his work also holds this quality. We are all repositories of our time and place; the work cannot help but reveal the politics and cultures that have shaped him. Gyatso collects materials from around the world to construct his images. Each work contains a kind of geographic specificity, relating to the time and place he is making the work, where he has been, and the things that have touched him.

Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra are based in Gurgaon, Haryana, a suburb of New Delhi. They work collaboratively in a wide variety of media including painting, sculpture, Installation, film, and design. Thukral & Tagra blur the lines between fine art and popular culture, product placement and exhibition design, as well as artistic inspiration and media hype. With playfulness and humour, their works comment on the globalization of consumer culture and its repercussions, which are being experienced in India today. They pose thoughtful questions about the nature of Indian identity as articulated by Indians themselves and projected onto India by the rest of the world.

ABSORPTION AS A WAY OF SEEING

Date｜27 August – 13 September, 2018, Monday – Saturday, 10am–7pm

Venue｜Pearl Lam Galleries, 6/F, Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Central, Hong Kong

来源： 艺术门