We are delighted to present "Portraiture", an exhibition showcasing works by Otto Li and Timothy Zau. Portraiture is often connected with the creation of everlasting memories or the notion of adoring a prominent figure. Through unconventional approaches, the two artists attempt to offer a contemporary interpretation of portraiture.

​

Mainly focusing on 3-dimensional works, Otto Li has mastered a skill breaking something apart digitally and reassembling it into a physical form. He applied the same technique to portraiture but in the form of drawings. His portraits, which are drawn with numbers, reveal only a recognizable silhouette of the individuals.  Instead of showing the visual appearance of their faces, he used digital coordinates to imply their facial features. Through numerical representation, he provokes the thought that what we see may not be what is truly before us.

​

The social media snapshots may surface only for seconds before vanishing into the vast sea of images.  Timothy Zau painted portraits based on anonymous selfies from Instagram. These ephemeral selfies of strangers were re-created in oil on canvas, a traditional painting technique which meant to last for centuries. The pictures, which had lifespans of seconds on social media, are now reborn to pass on for generations.

​

Otto Li (Li Tin Lun) obtained his BA (2003) and MFA (2013) from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.  He worked as a concept artist on CG animation for several years. His works often question the relationship between virtual and real worlds by deconstructing his subject matter and transforming its parts into another physical form. 

​

Timothy Zau (Zau Hou Wang) received a BA Fine Art (2008) from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University and an MA (2010) in Visual Culture Studies from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Timothy explores the role of online selfies with non-sense captions, which seem to tell a fragment of a story about someone's life, but in fact, say nothing at all.