Artify Gallery presents Synthetic Landscape, the first solo exhibition of local artist Frank Tang Kai Yiu in Hong Kong. Tang’s multi-disciplinary practice is rooted in the history of Chinese shan shui landscape painting. In this exhibition Tang seeks to address how contemporary society subsists under conditions of vast psychological, intellectual and spiritual distance from nature.

Chinese shan shui painting has strong roots in Taoist teachings, which dictates a symbiotic relationship between human beings and nature. The traditional framework of Chinese painting prescribes a process of copying, imitating and reference to, the visual authorities of historical masters. Shitao, the preeminent scholar and painter of the Qing Dynasty expounded that scholars must “learn from the past to transcend the present”. This rhythm of repetition, mimesis and strict emulation has been a bedrock of Chinese painting for centuries. However, within the contemporary landscape such practices have become redundant cycles of mindless repetition, frustrating meaningful relationships with the natural realm. In his work Rocks, Tang installs a high definition pinhole camera onto his paint brush, which he uses to repetitively paint an image of a rock. Audience can clearly observe the interaction between the brush, ink and paper and conclude that each and every act of copying has their own life. The artist’s practice marks a constant convergence in Chinese painting of the past and the present.

In Trees, Tang recreates sample images of different trees from important historical visual manuals. “Manual of the Mustard Seed Garden” (Jieziyuan Huapu) was published in the early Qing Dynasty, categorizing and documenting the ideology of illustrating natural elements. Rather than painting by observing nature, practitioners have grown accustomed to drawing from these secondary representations and lost the ability to communicate with nature itself. Through reproducing this unnatural process in his work, Tang questions whether contemporary Chinese art has diverged from the original spirit of Chinese painting.

Tang also addresses human relationships with their surroundings in the present. Urban landscapes and contemporary cartography are habitually dominated with architectural icons – creating a visual filter that omits nature from our perceptions. In Impression Mapping and Tree Mapping, Tang reconstructs the tenets of cartography by recording the flora and fauna of a cityscape, constituting a narrative of a city often neglected. By presenting an alternative orientation, Tang urges the audience to reconsider their relationships with the environment.

The exhibition elucidates the relationship between man, nature and city, bringing Chinese painting into an exciting contemporary context.

-Artify Gallery

Image: © Frank Tang
Courtesy of the artist and Artify Gallery