Blindspot Gallery is proud to present “Eyes Closed” exhibiting pen and ink paintings by Hong Kong‐born, New York‐based artist Annysa Ng. Selected by The Sunday Times in 2008 as one of the top ten contemporary artists to watch, Ng is excited to exhibit her painting works created between 2007 to now for the first time in Hong Kong.

“Eyes Closed may imply sleeping, dreaming, the state of unconsciousness. It may also be a passive state, a refusal to show emotions,” Ng says. In her works, Ng explores topics of identity and reality as perceived through various states of consciousness. Ng’s artworks always contain strong references to the identity and lack of identity of Hong Kong as a former British colony; and her works also addresses issues of femininity and female suppression.

Ng’s artist career began with sculptural and installation artworks. She later evolved to include pen and ink paintings and released her first painting series Tea Silk and Porcelain in 2007. Two most iconic characteristics in Ng’s paintings are the featureless faces and the East‐meet­‐West costume of the figures. The silhouette images lack any inferences of emotion and identity. Costume and posture of the figure become the only visual languages found in her paintings. The featureless faces of the figures are specifically tied to the identity and the history of Hong Kong. Combining period European fashion (pen drawing on paper of Elizabethan ruffle collar) with traditional Chinese costume, Ng’s works do not merely illustrate the coexistence of Eastern and Western cultures in Hong Kong; they also emphasize the paradox of its void identity.

Emperor of Kowloon is a mixed media installation piece; it consists of Ng’s iconic paintings of women wearing traditional Chinese hairstyles, elaborate ornaments with Elizabethan ruffle collar; and a pair of seal script calligraphy with its content adapted from the calligraffiti written by the Hong Kong legend Tsang Tsou Choi. The content of his calligraffiti usually includes his personal history as an emperor on exile, his family genealogy and the request of returning his land. Ng thinks his delusional act however is an oblique representation of Hong Kong’s desperate yearning for a cultural identity.

Her Eyes Closed, a nearly 3‐meter long hanging scroll painting of the silhouette image of a woman. Her emotion is obscured to the viewer, but her reach‐out hands suggest that she is in search of something. “Women” are often seen in Ng’s paintings. Their blank faces devoid of any individual characteristics seem to translate the artist’s experience about the negation of women’s distinct personalities and the loss of identity felt.

Ng’s pen and ink paintings negotiate both the presence and absence of culture that takes place in Hong Kong, the dark aesthetic reveals the astonishment between conflicts and compromises; divergence and convergence.

Annysa Ng will be present at the opening reception. Interviews with the artist are welcomed and can be arranged.

About Annysa Ng
Annysa Ng was born in Hong Kong. She studied fine art at Staatliche Akademie der Bildenen Künste in Germany and School of Visual Arts in New York. Ng’s works have been exhibited internationally including the SCOPE Basel, the Egon Schiele Art Centrum in Czech Republic and Osaka Municipal Arts Museum in Japan. Her work was collected by Deutsche Bank and the Stuttgart City Library. In 2008, she was named one of the top ten contemporary artists to watch by The Sunday Times. She currently lives and works in New York.

Opening Reception: Thursday, 28 April 2011, 6:30 to 8:30pm