Amelia Johnson Contemporary presents Anticipations, an exhibition of works by emerging as well as established artists from Hong Kong and abroad for one night only.
Participating artists: Konstantin Bessmertny, Tang Kwok Hin, Wong Kai Kin, Hyojin Park, and Ho-Yeol Ryu.
About the Artists:
Konstantin Bessmertny is one of the most distinguished artists working in Asia today. His technical mastery, achieved after seven years of studying Fine Art in the grand academies of the former soviet union, combined with his detailed knowledge on a wide-range of subjects including literature, music, history and politics lend to his work an intelligence and a credibility that is rarely witnessed in contemporary art. Konstantin Bessmertny’s work is utterly unique, employing humour and candour in depictions so subtle and gentle that they require revisiting time and time again to uncover all that they have to offer. Never formulaic or predictable, Bessmertny uses his work as a means of exploring and experimenting with new ideas, finding inspiration in the bizarrest of places and creating work that continues to challenge and excite preconceived notions.
Tang Kwok Hin was born and raised in Hong Kong. He studied Fine Art at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and received his Master of Fine Arts in 2008. Although a recent graduate Hin’s work is fast gaining recognition within the Hong Kong art scene. Hin’s work comprises photographs of intricate imaginary landscapes using ready-made elements appropriated from printed and electronic media and product labels. As well as working part-time as a visual arts teacher at the HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity, Hong Kong, Hin is also forging a reputation in Hong Kong as an independent curator and writer.
A graduate from RMIT, Wong Kai Kin’s works explore the relationship of human condition in relation to the urban environment, specifically the condition of isolation, loneliness, helpless and boredom. The small paintings that Wong presents are taken from black and white newspaper illustrations of architects computer drawings of show flats. He repaints them using colour and paint texture to give them an emotional content, and is interested in the way we project our dreams and desires through imagining owning material possessions.
Hyojin Park, born in 1974 in Andong and grew up in Konju, Souh Korera, recently received her MFA from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her work explores the freedom of artistic choice against the backdrop of the societal pressures a young female faces in modern-day Korea. After completing her fine art education in Seoul at Ewha Women’s University (BFA and MFA) in 2002, Park married and had three children before her family allowed her to go to London to pursue a second Masters degree at Goldsmith’s in 2010. At first glance, Park’s brightly coloured sculptures appear to be covered in kitsch, Mangaesque forms such as cherries, toys and eyeballs. The main shape of the sculptural body is a form representing her desire to be free from familial and social obligations as well as from the prejudices surrounding women’s physical sacrifices including pregnancy and childrearing. The eyeballs and other objects represent social, personal and the other ‘gazes’ that we are subjected to on a daily basis. Park’s works are the ultimate exercise in being provocative but remaining naïve at the same time.
The fundamental theme behind Ho-Yeol Ryu’s animations and photographs is to question simple perceptions of reality. He aims to present seemingly impossible situations or phenomena and, through the use of digital manipulation, to alter them to a paralell unreality. Life is thereby recreated but from another, unreal perspective. Ryu’s animation does not attempt to emulate the look and feel of film but instead represents the movement of the leaves on the tree and their behaviour when influenced by wind, sky and the time of day. Using rectangular blocks to create the leaves and a limited palette of blue and white the sound of the wind in the leaves and the rise and fall of the leaves evoke both the mood of the scene and the feel of the weather. Born in Seoul in 1971, Ryu completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Sculpture at Chung-Ang University in Seoul before obtaining his Masters Degree from the Braunschweig School of Art in Germany. Ryu has exhibited extensively and internationally and has work in several prominent collections.
Image: © Tang Kwok Hin, Amelia Johnson Contemporary
