After 26 years as an art fixture in Central Hong Kong, Plum Blossoms Gallery is celebrating its grand re-opening in our new large Wong Chuk Hang location, part of the new "South Island Cultural District". The gallery is mounting a thought provoking solo exhibition by Beijing-based Chinese Contemporary artist Huang Gang showcasing a selection of sculptures from his series "Revolution and Kasaya"

Huang Gang was born in Beijing in 1961. His interest in the arts began at a young age when he began his studies of traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy. He graduated from The Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1984 and in 1991 attained his Master's degree in Fine Arts from the same institution. Huang Gang's lifespan has made him a witness to China's transition from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution to its embrace of Engagement and Commercialism. His sculptures reimagine his childhood memories of "Red Culture" and provoke a search for meaning by contrasting past and present.

In "Revolution and Kasaya" Huang Gang creates sculptures that embody the new China's search for heroic icons in the fast ever changing culture. Figures of an always delighted Chairman Mao contrast with serene Buddhist sculptures that incorporate antique found-detritus of Tibetan monasteries destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Huang Gang is an avid collector and has collected and re-purposed the remnants of a vanishing Tibetan Buddhist culture. Drawing upon this juxtaposition of iconography Huang Gang brings his audience's attention to the dilemma faced by Chinese people in the present unbridled get-rich era that manifests in greed, displacement, fraud and overall uncertainty including the food they eat and the air they breathe. The absence of morality in the new China is a big problem that is undermining the glory of unimagined economic development. Through his art, Huang Gang expresses a culture's rapid evolution and search for various ways to find a path to fulfillment in life.

-Plum Blossoms Gallery

Image: Huang Gang