For its inaugural launch, Artify Gallery is proud to present the first solo exhibition of Malaysian artist Eiffel Chong in Hong Kong. Chong made ripples in the Hong Kong art scene earlier this year, with a strong commercial showing at the Christie’s summer Contemporary Art Auction, whilst also receiving critical reviews by the local press.

This Used To Be My Playground will reintroduce Chong’s work to a wider audience, and forms part of the artist’s ongoing series that captures abandoned spaces, representing the persistent cycle of human advancement, where the decrepit, more often than not is eradicated to allow for the latest development.

Central to all of Chong’s works is the Freudian notion of Death – a ‘fear of extinction’ that he sees as the driving force behind our social lives. In the artist’s own words, “No matter what I photograph, be it flowers or buildings or landscape, Death is something that I cannot avoid.” The images in This Used To Be My Playground critically address this in-between state, portraying the pain that lingers not with a place itself but with the things left by human beings at a particular place, “the unbearable traumatic feeling in us wanting to know what will happen next after knowing what has happened.” Chong has created five new site-specific works for this series – a city where building is given precedent over all.

Image courtesy: ©Eiffel Chong and Artify Gallery