Louis Vuitton presents Conceptual Walk Through - a group exhibition of Chinese conceptual artists Gao Weigang and Kingsley Ng. Curated by William Zhao, the exhibition will bring together 14 exhibits of various mediums, from installations to oil paintings to film and mixed media.

Gao Weigang and Kingsley Ng are two young Chinese artists with entirely different backgrounds. Gao was born and brought up in Northern China, while Ng was born in Hong Kong and educated in Canada, France and UK. Despite such distinctions, similarities can be found from their aesthetic styles and concepts. Driven by their personal ideologies, the employment of conceptual expression for both artists is strikingly similar; with both practices sharing fundamental concerns with society, the environment and humanities.

Superstructure, a seemingly simplistic title of an artwork by Gao is in fact a satirical play on words, and a deeper commentary on the systems of order in Gao’s sphere. Superstructure comprises of the imagery of an ascending reflective staircase hung flatly on a wall, reflecting the distance between desire and reality. The Chinese characters of the work’s title carry specific connotations, but possess synonyms that are far more ambivalent and encompassing than the likes of “High Society” or “Ideology”. The use of language reveals the propaganda that has permeated China in the last two to three decade. - with the ideology of the post-market reform era embedded in the practice of the younger generation of contemporary Chinese artists.

Spring: Homage to Liang Quan by Kingsley Ng is, at first glance, a simple art work, however, what is also apparent behind the work’s minimalist appeal is the nexus of people, materials, nature and the notion of time. Influenced by artist Liang Quan who expressed the notions of Poetry of Surfaces, Art and Life, and Archive of Time through the medium of tea, Ng employed the medium of water to explore and illuminate.. Ng purchased and catalogued bottles of mineral water from various brands and origins and recorded precisely the daylight conditions of the exact date and location from where the water was sourced. He subsequently used natural glass cups to simulate the said daylight performances, revealing the internationalism and borderless era of today.

Image: © Kingsley Ng, Espace Louis Vuitton Hong Kong