Make Believe is an exhibition of portraits in the media of painting, photography and ink on paper. It presents, for the first time in Hong Kong, Niko de La Faye’s Visages series, a two-year long photographic project conducted between Paris and Beijing. It also features a selection of works by Régis Gonzalez from his series recently exhibited at Lyon Biennale of contemporary art.

The title of the exhibition is a direct reference to Régis Gonzalez recurrent theme of childhood, as well as to the performance-based artistic practice of Niko de La Faye. The portraits presented in Make Believe are grounded in reality and at the same time are imaginary creations. They are invitations to question the idea of representation, and explore the borders between acting, pretending and deceiving.

About the Visages project and the idea of painting on faces, Niko de La Faye wrote:

‘I didn’t need a canvas, and furthermore I was intrigued by the idea of adding shapes and colours to the existing landscape of the human face. I would also integrate living eyes within the canvas. This way I could give an interesting dimension to an image that would be a mix between painting and photography. (…) In total, seventy-five models had their faces painted for this project. A collection of ten nationalities – Chinese, French, Indian, American, English, Irish, Hungarian, Dutch, Russian, and Belgian – ranging from 11 to 82 years old.’

About the creative process and the influences behind his series of portraits, Régis Gonzalez says: ‘I spend time looking for models. In fact, they are always people or friends but I need time to look at them and imagine them in some situation. I spend a lot of my time walking – from compulsion. Some situations may arise and turn into images that gradually fix themselves in my mind. I don’t know where they come from and they’re rather hazy, I allow them to become more detailed and then I try to transpose them into paint. (…) For the past couple of years I’ve been listening to a sort of music that has taken me quite a way. It’s a sort of sub-genre of underground hip-hop called horrorcore. It’s mostly based on sampling from films. Its contents are very vicious and these stimulate me to see images. It’s hip-hop from the lowest depths of society that hardly anybody listens to. Their music is available free to download, and I return the favour from time to time by working free on their visuals. In short, it creates the spiteful anger and atmosphere necessary to work long days on paintings.’

-Mur Nomade

Image: © Régis Gonzalez
Courtesy of the artist and Mur Nomade