YUKA TSURUNO is please to announce the upcoming exhibition "Collected Works" by the Hong Kong based artist Kwan Sheung Chi. This will be the first solo exhibition for him held in Japan.
Kwan Sheung Chi (born in 1980) was spotlighted with "Teapoy", the artwork made by Kwan according to his mother's memory that visualizes family history and human relationship, included in the "Hong Kong Art Biennial Exhibition 2005" (Hong Kong Art Museum). The videos he has been working intensively in recent years are brought to international attention, invited many international exhibition such as "Videozone V" (Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel, 2010), and "Homemade video from Hong Kong" (National Center for Contemporary Art, St. Petersburg, Russia, Arad Art Museum, Romania, 2011, and etc).
The common theme in his video works is an on-going wrestle with the duality of success and failure and achievement and defeat. For example, "Drinking a glass of hot chocolate with a folk" is a record of Kwan drinking a full glass of hot chocolate using a folk. In "Left vs. Right", he counts a winning rate of "Rock, paper, scissors" using his left hand vs. right hand. Through his work that are not seemingly advancing, we are invited to be witnesses of a life and and to come up with exit strategies from our dualistic mind-set.
The "ONE MILLION（Japanese Yen)", a new video work made for this exhibition, is to count a few bills till one million by repeating the video in the post-production process, that express ironic perspective on a principle of a monetary system and money game, the economic activity without reality.
The name of the show is "Collected Works" that includes different works in addition to video, like a book which contain different works of an author. The "Apple Core" is a pack of apple juice. In a supermarket it is a drink, a consumer product; putting it in a gallery, people might think about how do we consume, what we're actually consuming. "Lilies" is a seemingly a bunch of lilies in a vase, but actually a collection of artificial lilies if you take a close look. The each branches are difference from each others. Each factory that make artificial lilies has their own concept, ideal form of what lily is and how it should be. The lilies collections are looking to towards a common objective but none of them are the same, they all look different, and all fake.
About the Artist
KWAN Sheung Chi was born in Hong Kong in 1980. He graduated in 2003 with a BA in Fine Art from The Chinese University of Hong Kong in a top class. He was an aspired artist since in a college, and in 2002, “Kwan Sheung Chi Touring Series Exhibitions, Hong Kong” was toured in 10 major exhibition venues in Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Art Centre presented “A Retrospective of Kwan Sheung Chi”. In 2003, he set up a studio in Fotan industrial district, and since then became an active member of the “Fotanian” artists’ studios complex. Kwan co-founded the web-based arts television channel - Hong Kong Arts Discovery Channel (HKDC), and also a founding member of various advocacy groups, including hkPARTg (the Political Art Group) and Woofer Ten. Kwan was awarded the Starr Foundation Fellowship by the Asian Cultural Council in 2009 to participate in an international residency program in New york City.
