The finale of its trilogy exhibition - A Departure from Reality III: Tender Truth featuring Mainland Chinese artists, Maleonn and Jiang Pengyi. New series of the artists, Maleonn's What Love Is and Jiang Pengyi's Unregistered City will be exhibited at Blindspot Gallery in Central. Previous major works of Ma and Jiang will be shown at the newly opened Blindspot Annex in Wong Chuk Hang as a retrospective on the artists’ careers.

Continuing the theme of A Departure from Reality, Ma and Jiang employ the subjective lenses to project their thoughts and concepts into ‘The Tender Truth’, where carefully staged settings, miniature and digital manipulation deliver extraordinary messages to the viewers. Both Ma and Jiang’s artworks are closely related to “Magic Realism”, a prominent trend in literature and visual art that emerged in 1930s. Magic Realism marks a sharp departure from Realism (documentation) and Surrealism (departure from life), it encapsulates the mystique of the real. Maleonn’s use of dramatic characters and dreamlike set-­‐ups, Jiang’s disproportioned buildings and odd arrangement of still life objects build up to the climax of the visual journey in A Departure from Reality.

One of the most famous artists in conceptual photography, Maleonn loves to express his sensibility through photography accompanied by his poems and prose. Ma’s photographs are filmed both on location and in studio; his previous professional work as a TV commercial director gives a staged quality to both his indoor and outdoor shots. And Ma often participates in his art by incorporating the use of his own facial masks and body parts.The staged photography represents a whimsical world, with total manipulation of space and matters by the artist. In What Love Is, the phantom objects include fire flames, butterflies, flowers, decorative lights and paper-­‐cut figures on a miniature red-­‐curtained stage. Every prop is carefully arranged along with dramatic effects such as smoke and festive lighting. These make-­‐shift elements seem to sinify that ‘Love’ is like a dream/play.

Exhibition Preview: September 3 to 9, 2010 at Blindspot Gallery.