2022
Exhibition View
Participating Artists:
Muses Sze Mei Ting 施美婷, King Lau 劉敬楠,
Iris Tsang 曾思允, Stephanie Sin 冼朗兒, Fung Chim 風漸
10 March – 7 April 2022
Sansiao Gallery HK
1/F, Room 104 - 5 Wilson House, 19 - 27 Wyndham Street,
Central, Hong Kong
Guest Curator: Chun Poon
Muses Sze Mei Ting
What does 2022 mean to you? The process of exhibition planning reminds us of how we try to forecast or imagine an unknown future. This vision represents an attainable hope, assuming it is a hope of a better future. The five artists, working with different mediums, responded to the topic “2022” as varied as their distinctive artistic practices.
Muses Sze Mei Ting perceived 2022 as a set of numbers. In the digital space, digits are the building blocks of dots; dots can form lines and lines can define geometric surfaces. On the contrary, flowers are organic forms so Muses tries to convert them into geometric shapes using ceramics. The transformation is not intended as an artificial replication, but a simplified way to reinterpret the story of the flowers from Hong Kong. Alluding to the concept of "heterotopia", the flowers have reborn into another form of existence through the transformation.
Influenced and inspired by Japanese Ukiyo-e art, King Lau’s painting style focuses on lines with a strong calligraphic sense, as well as sharp colour contrasts. He aspires to depict the daily life subjects he encounters by using the traditional art form. King Lau interprets 20 as the past and 22 being the future. He believes it is a revelation, an opportunity to research and understand the distance between the past and future through his works.
King Lau
2022年對你而言意味著甚麼？整個展覽策劃的過程就像面對不確定的未來，我們如何嘗試預測，或透過想像去塑造這個未來。這個預測是一個可能實現的希望－假設它是一個美好的冀望。五位藝術家各善於不同的媒介創作，他們對《2022》這個主題的回應與其獨特的藝術實踐一樣多變。
對施美婷而言2022是一組數目字。在數碼化的世界裡，數字能夠組成點，點形成線，線形成幾何形狀的面。花朵是一種有機的形態，她試圖用陶瓷把它們轉化成幾何形態。這並不是人工複製，而是用一種簡化的方式來重新詮釋來自香港的鮮花故事。這種詮釋又帶有點「異托邦」的概念，轉化後的鮮花就像重生成為另一種存在形態。
受日本浮世繪藝術的影響和啟發，劉敬楠的繪畫風格注重強烈書法感的線條，亦帶有鮮明的色彩對比。他渴望以傳統藝術的形式描繪自己日常生活遇到的事物。劉敬楠將20解讀為過去，那麼22就是未來。他認為這是一個啟示，一個通過他的作品去尋找和理解過去與未來之間距離的機會。
Iris Tsang
Stephanie Sin
Fung Chim
Embroidery is Iris Tsang's preferred artistic expression. She has visited different countries to learn sewing, weaving, and other various traditional techniques to form her unique language. To her, 2022 conveys an uncertainty about the future, be it a year or 10 years from now. She wants to express the ambiguity by sewing, capturing plants that are already extinct or about to become extinct. Her work references the Garden of Eden and Indian palace garden design concepts, which originally echo their vision of paradise.
Stephanie Sin likes to reconstruct images found on the Internet with the daily scenery encountered in real life. She merges the two on canvas, using vivid colours to imply the exaggeration on the internet and the confusion in the real world. She believes that the 2 in 2022 represent opposition – the opposition between reality and the virtual world, or the different stories trusted by different minds. Everybody strives to find the acceptable truth, but at the same time is frustrated by the instability and helplessness of the state of the world today.
Passionate in depicting the repetition and variation of things with a realistic style, Fung Chim often paints plant leaves and brick walls with meticulous oil painting techniques. He carefully manages the composition on the canvas, creating a strong contrast between the organic forms of plants and the cold brick walls. When Fung Chim was searching for possible issues related to 2022, global nuclear disarmament often came up in search results. If nuclear waste represents death, then plants are the most important symbol of life, as they are capable of germinating and surviving in any environment.
The year 2022 appears to the curator Chun Poon as a mid-term exam for all people who contribute to the development of Hong Kong, accessing how far we have come and how much further we can go until the final exam in 2047. Planned in 2020, the exhibition was meant to be released in early 2021, but the uncontrollable force of nature drove us to the year 2022. Whether the unknown tomorrow is changeable or fated, it may all hinge on a single thought in a single moment.
刺繡是曾思允比較喜歡運用的藝術表達方式。她曾拜訪不同的國家學習各種傳統刺繡、縫紉等技巧，以形成其獨特的藝術語言。她認為2022反映了一種不確定性，對未來的不肯定，無論這未來將在一年還是十年後到來。她想通過刺繡勾畫那些已經滅絕或即將滅絕的植物，以此表達那種對世事變幻無常的感慨。作品中引用了伊甸園和印度宮殿花園的設計概念，而這些概念本為對天堂憧憬的象徵。
冼朗兒素來喜歡將互聯網上看到的影像和現實生活中遇到的日常風景進行重構。她把兩者在畫布上融合在一起，運用鮮豔的色彩來暗示互聯網的誇張及現實世界的困惑。她認為2022內的那個2代表對立性，就如同現實與虛擬世界之間的對立，又如每個人不同觀點之間的異議。大家都努力尋找屬於自己能夠接受真相，但同時亦對當今世界狀況的不穩定及無助感到沮喪。
風漸熱衷於以寫實風格描繪事物的重複性及其變化，經常以精細的油畫技法繪製植物葉子和磚牆。他在畫布上用心經營構圖，使有機形態的植物與冰冷的磚牆形成強烈的對比。風漸在搜索與2022相關議題的過程中，他發現全球核武裁軍常常出現在他的搜索結果範圍內。如果說核廢料代表死亡，那麼植物就是最重要的生命象徵，它們能夠在任何環境中發芽和生存。
2022年對客席策展人潘臻而言，是對所有為香港作出貢獻的人的中期考試：在2047年的期末考試之前，檢驗我們走了多遠，還能走多遠。展覽原定2021年初發表，計劃始於2020年初，但因各種不可控制的力量將我們推到了2022年。明天是未知的，是可以改變的抑或是命中注定的，只是在一念之間。