Blindspot Gallery is delighted to announce our participation in Art|Basel Hong Kong this year at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre on 21 – 23 May 2021, presenting works by Chen Wei, Un Cheng, Jiang Pengyi, Jiang Zhi, Sarah Lai, Lam Tung Pang, Sin Wai Kin, Trevor Yeung, Yeung Tong Lung and Zhang Ruyi.
Chen Wei fabricates an image of satellites strewn across an abandoned construction site, starkly lit in a nocturnal cyberpunk glow; the vacant landscape poetically yet disturbingly locked in time. Chen exposes the aftermath of rapid industrialisation and proliferating economic growth as waste and excess reproduce like mushrooms in abundance, a reflection of the country’s consumerist and materialist aspirations.
In a recent diptych painting Nice to have a night like this (2021), Un Cheng uses her signature psychedelic color palette to paint night scenes of Sham Shui Po overlayed with other forgotten corners and fragments of her memory. She conjures an intricate network of portals that transitions the viewer from naked reality to imagined dreamscapes.
Stripping back to the very foundations of image-making, in Foresight (2017-2018), Jiang Pengyi resists human intervention and grants agency to time and organic substances, allowing the decomposition of food waste to manipulate the surface of light sensitive film through the secretion of bacteria and chemicals. Simultaneously at Blindspot Gallery, Jiang Pengyi’s solo exhibition Sun! Sun! takes place.
In Jiang Zhi’s recent landscape oil painting series, The world is yours, as well as ours (2013-ongoing), the artist intentionally photographs images of landscapes, and manipulates the image with digital processes and silkscreen printing techniques. The oil painting ultimately materializes as a union of photographic and print elements, transforming our perception of ordinary landscapes into an incredible visual field.
In Monica (2018), Sarah Lai paints a movie still depicting bombshell Chingmy Yau in the iconic erotic thriller Naked Killer (1992). Yau, a leading Hong Kong actress of the 1980s and 90s, embodies the persona of a Femme Fatale, capturing the sensuous aesthetic of the bygone 90s era presented in mainstream media and entertainment.
Lam Tung Pang’s Meaningless No.12 (2020) is an oversized still life of anonymous daffodil in the wild, wavering against a sudden wind in a bid to survive uncontrollable environmental forces. The anonymity of the plantation renders meaningless against the backdrop of our monumental world and history at large.
Sin Wai Kin (fka Victoria Sin) uses drag in their practice as speculative fiction to challenge our systemic attitudes towards gender, sexuality and identity in our status-quo. In the process of using facial wipes to remove their makeup after each performance, Sin discovered that the imprinted wipes became an archive of their evolving characters.
Trevor Yeung presents two iterations of Night Mushroom Colon (2016-ongoing) , a small cluster of unruly luminescent mushrooms inhibiting unassuming corners, a mixed-media work combining electrical converters and night lights. These mushrooms thrive in fecundity, penetrate orifices, and reproduce through polyamorous converters and tempting colors.
Yeung Tong Lung narrates the vernacular street scenes and people of Hong Kong in Kam Wa Street (2014). The regular bustling market scenes of Kam Wa Street at the peak of day become deserted in the dead of night. Yeung plays with the apparent realism in his paintings with an array of perspectives, presenting new ways of looking. Using his skilful dissection and fusing of reality and imagination, he elevates the familiar banal, inducing a moment of illusory clarity in midnight.
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 incorporate fragments from demolition sites, rendering the life of cacti into artificial stone. These defunct life forms become monuments imbued with natural history.
