HART Social Studio Showcase “#Ew! Normal?” presents an exciting opportunity to visit the space where 17 artists of diverse backgrounds explore synergetic art practices and create a community of their own. This particular showcase brings up the question of what it means to be ‘social’ in the ‘socially distanced era’.
Visitors will not only have the opportunity to view displayed artwork from each of the artists, but also have the chance to be welcomed into the private workstations of the participating artists. The showcase also consists of the dialogues and dynamics arising in the art ecosystem.
The opening of the showcase will be at 6pm, 20 November (Friday) with a collective performance; rethinking the community building ethos of HART Haus. The showcase will also include a workshop to reveal how both communal and individual narratives are created from participant photographs, and will occur on 28 November (Saturday). Lastly, online panel discussion and live studio will occur on 9 January (Saturday), and the online performance will occur on 6 February (Saturday). They will involve the participating artists and the members of the collective performance to examine a deeper meaning the social within contemporary art practice.
The showcase will open to the public from 20 November 2020 until 5 February 2021. Prior to visiting, make sure to reserve a timeslot 24 hours in advance at the top of this page. We look forward to showcasing the social with you through these final days of a most abnormal year.
Artist List (Surname in Alphabetical Order)
Nadim Abbas, Ane Alfeiran, BH, Damian Boylan, Cindy Chan, Tap Chan, Chui Pui-Chee, Kora Kwok, Jen Yoohyun Lee (The Buoy), Cassie Kaixin Liu, Marty Miller (The Buoy), Doris Ng, Herman Rahman, Sharu Binnong Sikdar, Amy Maria Tong, KC Wong, and Wu Jiaru
HART 匯舍展示《#Ew! Normal?》將是一場拜訪創意工作室的刺激體驗—在這裡17個藝術家背景各異，協力探索藝術創作，並共構創意社群。這場工作室展示將探討在「社交距離」的時代中，何謂「社交」。
訪客不單可以觀覽每位藝術家的作品，更能參觀參展藝術家的私人工作區。活動將致力展現一個藝術生態中，蘊釀的對話和動態。
《#Ew! Normal?》將於2020年11月20日（五）下午六時開幕，並設有集體表演活動，反思 HART Haus 構建社群的精神。《#Ew! Normal?》同時將於11月28日（六）舉辦工作坊，以群眾的相片揭示集體和個人的故事。壓軸的是1月9日（六）的線上講座和工作室直播、以及2月6日（六）的線上表演，屆時將邀請參展藝術家和表演活動的成員，探討當代藝術創作中社交的深層意義。
而工作室將於2020年11月20日至2021年2月5日開放予公眾參觀。拜訪前請先於至少24小時前在上面的網頁報名。期待在這個不尋常的一年的最後日子，為你展示社群！
參與藝術家（按姓氏排列）
唐納天、Ane Alfeiran、BH、Damian Boylan、陳樹貞、陳沁昕、徐沛之、Kora Kwok、Jen Yoohyun Lee (The Buoy)、劉開炘、Marty Miller (The Buoy)、吳玳誼、Herman Rahman、Sharu Binnong Sikdar、Amy Maria Tong、黃家銓、吳佳儒
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Amy Maria Tong
Untitled
Oil painting
36x48 inches
2020 (work in progress)
Life is a theatre we tailor ourselves to fit the part that we are playing. This painting is part of a series called 'What would you wear if no one else is looking". A series that explores moments of post-truth.—————
Amy Maria Tong is known for her abstract experimentation on possible scenarios. Her work is often a collage of idealised, multi-layered scenarios, expressing the emotional traces from her daily encounters with society. Treading around the realm of truth, rituals, and absurdities, Tong creates textured environments to explore the complexity of human emotions within surrealist settings.
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Ane Alfeiran
Journey to Nowhere
Mixed Media
120x80cm
2020
“Journey to Nowhere” is an investigational piece for the artist, experimenting with different techniques, materials and colours to develop her artistic practice. This work is an expedition into the unconscious mind of the artist who followed her emotions, feelings and instincts to create this unique work of art.—————
Ane Alfeiran is a self-taught Mexican artist who, from a young age, found an escape in art and a forum in which to express her feelings, hopes and fears. As someone who continues to travel the globe, Alfeiran draws on inspiration and technique from the different cities and cultures she has experienced. Alfeiran takes us into the emotional world of each of her subjects, making each painting stand out with its own individual story. Through a deep personal connection present in her compositions, she aims to stimulate the viewer’s feelings and imagination and encourage them to create their own interpretation of what the art means to them.
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BH
Danshari
Mixed Media
180x180cm
2020I am writing myself a letter, it's a letter of condolence to say goodbye and bury a precious object. It's a process to explore an artistic and elegant ritual to let go of the letters in life. Cutting all the hypocritical art kitsch and fabricated wording, I am speaking human languages and drawing native circles to mourn the bygone.
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BH is a slashie mutant who is interested in observing various living forms and patterns, contextualising and recasting them with new suggested meanings through contemporary paintings. It is also a monologue process to identify his own form, understand the relationship between his own formation and other forms of relationships, as well as to navigate the impact and value of his existence to society. He believes the best way to characterize himself would be the egg itself.
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the grammar of whispering
Video, sound, acrylic on canvas, inkjet print on paper, sponge
Dimensions variable
2020the grammar of whispering is compilation of ideas that unfold through writing and sound making. The ideas in different parts of the work are varied and closely connected at the same time. Together, they demonstrate an attempt to revolt against “loud speaking,” and to establish an alternative set of rules, methods and techniques around “whispering.”
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Cassie Kaixin Liu is an artist and writer based in southern China. She works across installation, videography, performance, and writing projects. In her practice, she appropriates varying motifs found in sound, light and texts to construct spaces, atmospheres and narratives. Her works discuss topics ranging from the interrelationship between body and space to regional diasporic experiences in southern China, often resulted from and fuelled by her negotiations with her own identities and surroundings. Liu obtained her Bachelor’s Degree from the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University.
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Cindy Chan
Ruins
Rock sculpture
140x90cm (table dimension)
2020Imagining Hong Kong 10,000 years later.
Meditative art. Dot painting on rocks and Zentangle drawing on cement.—————
Cindy Chan is a film veteran with solid and diverse experience in international film institutions. She also started nurturing the next generation in films schools Hong Kong in these years. With her film knowledge, Chan applied her concept and skills into artwork, creating a unique direction of Zentangle inspired arts and meditative oriented direction. She recently participated at the Hong Kong Affordable Art Fair in 2018 and 2019 consecutively.
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Damian Boylan
Abberation
Molten brass residue on poly(methyl methacrylate)
122 x 122 cm / 48 x 48 in
2020'Abberation' marks the second work in a new series of 'Rarefaction Paintings'. The work was created with the pouring of molten brass at 1100°C, onto a primed substrate.
While ostensibly the painting is monochromatic, as the viewer allows the gestural marks to coincide with reflected light sources within the room, while moving themselves through the intervening space, an iridescent gossamer presents itself, and the true chromatic nature of the work is brought to light.
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Damian Boylan became a scientist, and completed a Master’s degree (MEng) in Aerospace Engineering, long before turning to art. Those early beginnings pervade his work, which is multidisciplinary in range, including Painting, Photography, Videography and Sound. His methodology is more akin to scientific investigation. Boylan experiments with fundamental physical phenomena, and expands upon them, presenting the result to the viewer as art. The intent of his work is about something fundamental and perpetual. In essence, it is an unearthing of the very building blocks of this universe.
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Doris Ng
999000112110
Mixed Media
40x50cm (series of 4)
2020It's a series of meshed letters and images collage transformed and reclaimed as geometric monologue painting. Quotes and deep voices are coded and painted through the conscious tension between geometric shapes and organic forms. The non representational composition is an outcome of concurrent iterative art practice. It's a visual blog to share the artist void where you will find orderly compassion.
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Born in Hong Kong and convent educated until age 17, Doris Ng moved to Melbourne to complete BA Degree in Business at Monash University. She is currently studying a Fine Arts Degree at Hong Kong Art School in association with RMIT, and MA Degree in Arts and Cultural Enterprises at University of Arts London. Since 2017, she works as an artist and art project director.
Trained in pencil, pastel and oil painting since small age, Ng now incorporates her research methodology into practice-led-research artwork, where she examine the paradoxes in mankind and confront contradictory inter-relationships. She does not seek ‘unification’ in things, instead she embraces diversity and multiple perceptions.
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Herman Rahman
LAGAN
Inkjet print, oil
26x 4x6inch
2020LAGAN(2020) can be seen as a year long diary entry, using the english alphabet as a departure point for ways of thinking, how to remember and how to forget. Combining archive images compiled through 2020, LAGAN provides an A-Z recollection of words the artist found most impactful in what has been a tough year for many. On the print, a morse code text of the corresponding alphabet invites the viewer to rethink our relationship between vernacular language and photographic communication in an age of miscommunication and distrust.
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Herman Rahman is a research-led Singaporean photographic artist, who is represented by AI Gallery, London. Rahman’s work explores political trauma and suffering, through the blurred dichotomies of fact and fiction. His interest lies in investigating state power structures and making visual these abuses of power, taking a stance as a ‘frustrated journalist’, with a responsibility to document, criticize, and show.
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Jen Yoohyun Lee
Deep see
Digital print on vinyl, collection of QR codes
1.5 x 4 m on the floor
2020QR codes. My engagement with them has become everyday. All these ‘quickly responding’ codes came and went, consumed and forgotten. What happens to these bygone portals? How long have we been floating on top of them? How shallow are we with these enigma of pixels?
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Coming from sculpture and environment design background, Jen Yoohyun Lee is a Korean-American practitioner who explores sculptural and microscopic ways of practicing socially-engaged art. Apart from tangible materials, she engages with different forms of narratives, gestures, inter-personal relations and such, which are arranged within the process of de-linking and re-linking in social mechanism. She is currently developing her doctoral dissertation on the social operation of narratives and the position of socially-engaged artists in relation to them.
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Wu Jiaru
untitled_afternoon
Acrylic on glass
tbc
2020One World One Dream (excerpt)
video
Dimensions variable
2018—————
Wu Jiaru is an artist who currently works and lives in Hong Kong. She obtained her BA in Fine Arts and English Language from Tsinghua University in 2014, and her MFA from the School of Creative Media in City University of Hong Kong in 2017.
She experiments with imagined spaces and social norms in forms of installation, moving images, printed edition, image synthesis, etc. Wu’s practice covers a wide range of topics, including cross-boundary facilities, literature, modern service industries, manufacturing industries and innovation and technology, romantic relationships, business environment, quality living, education and talent, regional cooperation plans, ecology, as well as mechanisms and arrangements. Wu has participated in many good group exhibitions and her art is in the collection of some important people and organisations.
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KC Wong
RidiculouSneakers: Superstars Series Mixed media
Figurine 140mmH x 50mmW x 25mmD / Superstar US9 / 815mmH X 200mmW
2020Figurine: PLA by 3D print / Mixed Media on Sneaker / Mixed Media on Skateboard
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A multi-discipline artist, KC Wong has been involved in illustration & animation production, visual merchandising and art creation. KC has worked on commercial visual communication projects with companies in both Hong Kong and China. KC is the founder of “Sick Sick Creation" - a creative agency focusing at story-telling, as well as brand building.
KC brings a depth of experience in visual communication to his creations, with a BA (Hons) in Design and Visual Communication (Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 2003), and qualifications in Advertising Design and Computer Art and Design.
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Marty Miller
Far from Sure
Photographic print and book
200x200cm
2020My computer listened to our call, as it now seems designed to do. Leaving many words behind, it merely exposed the cracks for memories to fall through. Only when feeding such traces back into itself does the process of forgetting become clearer. It seems some words stubbornly refuse to relinquish their imprint on the image that remains.
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Nadim Abbas
MicellaeFlyposted laserjet prints
Dimensions variable
2020Nadim Abbas’ practice examines the mercurial properties of images and their ambiguous relationship with reality. Referencing a diverse range of subjects - from bunker archaeology to otaku subcultures - he instills generic forms with unfamiliar associations, in an attempt to describe the “invisible violences” that permeate seemingly innocuous facets of everyday life.
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Pui Chee Chui
露華濃 Impearled Dew水墨炭粉紙本Ink and charcoal on paper
H 127 x W 32 cm
2020花氣薰人 Flowers’ Fragrance水墨設色炭粉紙本Ink, charcoal and colour on paper
H 125.5 x W 35 cm
2020Born in 1980, Dr Pui Chee Chui apprenticed under Mr. Jat See-yeu and Professor Wang Dong-ling. After obtaining his first degree at the Department of Fine Arts, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Chui furthered his postgraduate studies at the Department of Chinese Calligraphy, China Academy of Art, where he obtained his Master of Arts and Doctoral Degrees in 2007 and 2010 respectively. Chui's artworks are collected by the Hong Kong Museum of Art, Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology of University of Oxford and are popular among private collectors.
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Sharu Binnong Sikdar
Sky & EarthAcrylic on wood barks
50x76cm
2015Sky & Earth captures sunset moments on painted wood barks. The wood barks are carved from fallen tree branches, they are chipped out and painted orderly to transition in colours. Miniature in size, it allows viewers to contemplate on an ordinary moment that is often overlooked within the fast-paced environment we live in.
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Sharu Binnong Sikdar (b.1994) is a Hong Kong born Indian Filipino. Sikdar’s artistic practice is repetitive and labour-intensive as she collects and reconstructs found objects. Sikdar utilizes branches, barks, leaves and her hair as main medium. This leads her to explore the relationship between nature and human beings, the ephemerality and personal growth.
Sikdar graduated with a Painting B.F.A in 2017 at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Hong Kong.—
Tap Chan
Speed of Night 1.0
Kinetic Sculpture
Approx. 113cm x 9cm x 9 cm
2019The line, in this proposition, refers to a scientific conception of time where past, present and future co-exist. Intuitively, time could also stumble, slow down or seem to stop altogether as shown in notions of time-travel and other temporal warps or loops. This abstract idea of time also recalls episodes of a recurring school festival opening day in the Japanese anime Urusei Yatsura 2 Beautiful Dreamer. The black lines on the circulating poles stand out from the background with a rhythmic aura, triggering an ethereal atmosphere of time passing, an ambient ritual experience.
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Kora Kwok
untitled (golden apple)
Acrylic, spray paint on wood
41.5" x 39"
2020Reminiscent of street artist Invader's mosaic style, untitled (golden apple) presents a fragmented depiction of the golden apple from Greek mythology. The golden apple is a symbol of discord, and yet its origins are fundamentally tied to the idea of beauty. Drawing upon these two contrasting (and at times complementary) ideas, untitled (golden apple) offers a reflection and meditation on our current times.
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Video Screening - Various Artists
Cassie Kaixin Liu
Deep-Sky Objects (excerpt)
Video
8 min 15 sec
2019Herman Rahman
50 Steps To Freedom
8 mins 31 sec
201950 Steps To Freedom is a reenactment of Mr Joo-Il Kim's escape from North Korea into China, via the Tumen river. With armed guards patrolling the river every 50m, Mr Kim made it a point to keep his steps as quiet as possible. Calculating the inverse law of decibel and distance, a 40 decibel increase in a quiet landscape would alert the guards, and the artist has placed himself within the complex nature of Mr Kim’s escape, reenacting 50 steps under 40 decibels in a Folley Studio. Juxtaposed with this gesture of escape, are images of North Korea from the Korean Central News Television, or state television, depicting scenes of nature, patriotism, the power of the state. On one hand, a raw, tension-filled story of running away, and on another, an enforced idea of the perfect, utopian society.
Wu Jiaru
One World One Dream (excerpt)
video
Dimensions variable
2018
