Lam Tung Pang presents his Potted City series (2022), his latest body of work on wooden panel paintings depicting mountain and cityscape condensed within a domestic potted bonsai. Reflecting on the scale of his microscopic self against the monumental world, the artist embraces the sentiments of longing and loss whilst bracing himself for the journey ahead. These allegorical landscapes serve as a token of remembrance for the artist.
Un Cheng’s paintings transport us to Iceland where the artist completed a residency in 2018. Whilst strolling the sparse landscapes of the Nordic winter, the artist found companionship and comfort in her internal dwellings. Piecing together photographic fragments with mental imagery, she selectively depicts specific subject matter, whilst plunging the rest of the pictorial landscape into a surreal blur. Simultaneously at Blindspot Gallery, Cheng presents her solo exhibition What’s there when you ain’t home?.
In Horizon Scan No.6 (2017), Andrew Luk torches pieces of a painted canvas using homemade napalm, collaging the charred pieces into an encased lightbox with gradually changing colour temperature. The illuminated piece appears to resemble a rugged and barren terrain. Interested in the material history of civilization, the work reveals and compresses facets of manmade and naturally occurring histories into a single frame.
So Wing Po’s unique sensitivity, observation and imagination towards the fabric of nature is manifested in her newest kinetic sculpture Organ #4 (2022). A sculptural study physically replicating a vital biological organ is forged from medicinal herbal powders sourced from nature. Reflecting on the correlations between interior and exterior macro and microorganic substances, So fabricates ecosystems that defy the natural orders of the universe.
In the hair embroidery work Juliette (2019), Angela Su reconstructs and recontextualizes the anatomy of the female body, where skin and internal organs are metamorphosized into an intricate network of mechanical hardware and alien growth. Reflecting on the history of the female body as a heavily politicized and gendered vessel, Su’s female cyborg stands in defiance against these existing constructs.
Sin Wai Kin’s A world dreaming they are you (2021) is a make-up removal wipe imprinted with the face paint of their character The Storyteller who made his first appearance in the video work Today’s Top Stories (2020). Challenging the media biases rooted in the storytelling of news accounts, The Storyteller examines the often indistinguishable binary between reality and illusion.
Zhang Ruyi’s practice deals with the crossover between organic phenomena and industrial landscapes, her sculptures often reminiscent of relics in a post-urbanist landscape. Zhang’s Matte Substance series (2019-ongoing) incorporate fragments from demolition sites, rendering the life of cacti into artificial stone. These defunct life forms become monuments imbued with natural history.
Frequently personifying plants as an extension of the human condition within his practice, Trevor Yeung’s Suspended Mr. Cuddles (Green) (2022) is an uprooted Pachira tree strapped and suspended to a corner with construction straps. Commonly known as the Money Tree with its braided trunks, Yeung depicts these species bound aggressively into uncomfortable and precarious positions, their captivity mimicking their own twisted nature.
Jiang Zhi’s latest edition of his oil painted series, The world is yours, as well as ours (2013-ongoing) sees the artist intentionally glitch images of landscapes through digital processes and silkscreen printing techniques. The artist pushes paint through the porous fabric of the polyester canvas, blurring the visual field from both sides of the picture plane. The oil painting ultimately materializes as a union of photographic and print elements.
In The Glowing Dust Grains (2021), Chen Wei stages a scene of a pedestrian, reimagining the disregarded dust grains on the curb as a scatter of glistening gems and jewels.Against the backdrop of industrial and gentrified China, Chen Wei frequently conveys the mixed sentiments on the equally new and neglected city. Imbued with an illusory air, the image straddles the ambiguous boundaries between the familiar and the imagined.
Jiang Pengyi manipulates photographic film through exothermic processes in his Sun! Sun! series(2018-ongoing), creating abstracted images by employing the rays of the sun. Using a magnifying glass to intensify sunlight, the artist kindles a flame, burning scars and fissures onto a cardboard contraption that covers light sensitive film. Like the afterimages when we stare at the sun, the photographic film uncovers an ensemble of spectral streaks.
