|
The recent exhibition at Amelia Johnson Contemporary features eight artists, all selected from the gallery’s award winning stable. In a variety of media and a diversity of styles, the exhibition highlights some of the promising young artists working in China today. Themes of urban isolation are the focus of Xing Danwen’s large format photographs. The exhibited works are taken from her “Urban Landscape” series, an ongoing project for the artist since 2004. In these vast images are architectural maquettes, which Xing photographs and then transforms into backdrops against which miniscule figures play out a series of bizarre film-noir scenarios. |
 |
Winter o6/o7 at Amelia Johnson Contemporary – Amelia Johnson, Curator
The recent exhibition at Amelia Johnson Contemporary features eight artists, all selected from the gallery’s award winning stable. In a variety of media and a diversity of styles, the exhibition highlights some of the promising young artists working in China today.
Themes of urban isolation are the focus of Xing Danwen’s large format photographs. The exhibited works are taken from her “Urban Landscape” series, an ongoing project for the artist since 2004. In these vast images are architectural maquettes, which Xing photographs and then transforms into backdrops against which miniscule figures play out a series of bizarre film-noir scenarios. The artist herself is transformed, Cindy Sherman-esque, into characters in her work, and the overall effect is that of a film set with unsettling events taking place in an otherwise unpopulated urban landscape.
Lam Wai Kit is a photographer and video artist working between Hong Kong and Italy. A graduate from the prestigious Goldsmiths College, London, Lam employs oft-overlooked details in split-frame photographs and videos. In this exhibition, she presents intimate images of obscure corners of rooms that are heavily saturated in colour. Entitled “The Red Room of Ivan,” both the title and the small details demand that the viewer draw conclusions about the occupant and his/her life.
Prosperity VII & VIII, are two new, exquisite works by the Shanghai-based artist Caroline Cheng. Known for her political ceramic pieces, these works mark a subtle departure. The works are large-scale, black burlap imperial robes onto which thousands of hand made, miniature porcelain butterflies have been sewn. Other works in this series have been exhibited in museum shows worldwide, but this is the first time such works have been put on display in Hong Kong.
Larry Yung is a Korean-American artist of Chinese descent whose work explores a darker subject matter than his palette of subdued colours and delicate beauty of subject matter might at first suggest. His large portraits of Shanghai poster girls of the 1920s and 30s hint at a disturbing life outside of the idyllic picture that they present in the advertisements. As an example, Woman in Blue depicts a woman who looks as if she has just stumbled or perhaps been thrown to the floor—her beautiful face is at odds with her look of fearful confusion and the disheveled appearance of her hair and cheongsam. The strong shadow and picturesque background raise the possibility that this might be a scene from a film, but perhaps this is instead a moment of her real, less perfect life exposed in the spotlight. Yung gives nothing away here, leaving the decision up to the viewer.
Other artists featured in the exhibition include Billy Lee, Su Cheng and Konstantin Bessmertny. Billy Lee is a sculptor who works in bronze, stone and steel. His large-scale work is represented in public collections across the globe, but here he presents smaller works in bronze that display his characteristic strength of form. Using photography, silkscreen and acrylic, Nanjing artist Su Cheng creates multilayered images of disconcerting, haunting works on canvas. Konstantin Bessmertny is the outsider in the exhibition. A Russian working in China, his large, mixed media works are steeped in his occidental training, yet are also littered with references to the Orient.
Although there is no specific theme to the “Winter o6/o7” exhibition and little, other than nationality, to link the artists together, what is immediately apparent from the exhibited work is that China is influencing a new generation of highly talented artists to create work that is as unique in concept as it is divergent in technique.
