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Installation view of various works by Vunkwan Tam, 8th Yokohama Triennale, Wild Grass: Our Lives, March 15 – June 9, 2024. Curated by Liu Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu. Photography: YAMAMOTO Masahito Photo courtesy of Organizing Committee for Yokohama Triennale

Vunkwan Tam at Basel Social Club, June 11 **– 16, 2024.** Photography: Michael Yu

F, Empty Gallery, 27 August –19 Nov 2022. Photography: Michael Yu

Vunkwan Tam, *may you have neither dew nor rain, may no showers fall on your terraced fields*, 2023. Installation view, 118½, Emalin, 2024

*Untitled (IIIII, a Quiet Life)*, 2021
Straw hats, enamel paint

*Untitled (XXI)*, 2022
Sunflower stems, nails
Installation view, ‘Temporary,’ 2022, Negative Space

It was not good in my garden that year/ It was not good in my garden/ I am not brave/ I am a merchant/ My trade was bad for me/ But for my family and for my fearful son, Drake/ It sure looked like bravery/ But it was not good in my garden that year/ It was not good in my garden, 2020
Cardboard boxes, concrete, spray paint, emulsion paint, stainless steel zip-ties, bricks, acrylic picture frame, chains, metal parts

*L.O.*, 2021
PVC pipe, T-shirt, engine oil
Installation view, ‘Noble Rot,’ 2022, Para Site

*Untitled (The First 10 Years)*, 2021
Mannequin, hat, enamel paint
Installation view, ‘A Temporal Test for all Possible Clouds,’ 2021, Tempé Art Space

*Untitled (Mob)*, 2021
Diapers, metal wires
Installation view, ‘A Temporal Test for all Possible Clouds,’ 2021, Tempé Art Space

Vunkwan Tam’s artistic practice ranges across sculpture, video, text, sound, and installation. Often taking the form of marginally adjusted readymades—whether found objects, images, or textual fragments—Tam’s work expresses what might be termed a contemporary ethics of exhaustion, foregrounding the residues of circulation, labor, and the minimal human trace in place of the conventional performance of artistic personae. He received his Bachelors in Fine Art from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2020, and opened his debut solo exhibition F at Empty Gallery in 2023. He has participated in group exhibitions and performances at Emalin, London (2024); Art Museum at the University of Toronto (2023); Para Site, Hong Kong (2022); and Tai Kwun Contemporary (2020). In 2024, he participated in the 8th Yokohama Triennale and Basel Social Club.

Vunkwan Tam_Bio CV
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Vunkwan Tam press archive
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2025-04-01	Richard Hawkins' The Garden of Loved Ones opens at Empty Gallery
	Our current solo exhibition of Richard Hawkins, The Garden of Loved Ones, opened on March 23, 2025, and was written up in the following publications: The best shows to see in Hong Kong ahead of Art Basel, Payal Uttam, Art Basel Nine Solo Shows to See in Hong Kong, Spring 2025, Anna Dickie, Ocula 7 Shows to See During Hong Kong Art Week 2025, Claire Shiying Li, Frieze Headed to Art Basel Hong Kong? You Need to Make Time for the City’s 13 Can’t-Miss Exhibitions, Giuliana Brida and Katie Kern, Cultured Shows to See in Hong Kong, March 2025, ArtAsiaPacific The exhibition, along with TRST03 Covey Gong, will be on view through May 24, 2025.
2025-03-19	Ophelia Lai interviews Stephen Cheng in Financial Times
	Ophela Lai, on the occasion of Empty Gallery’s 10th anniversary, interviewed Stephen Cheng, our gallery founder, in the Financial Times: “A pitch-black art gallery — now that’s a bright idea: Empty Gallery, a ‘black-cube’ arts space situated in a Hong Kong high-rise, has a reputation for immersive, experimental experiences: Hong Kong’s Empty Gallery envelops you in darkness. The lift doors open and, for the few seconds before your eyes adjust, there is nothing but a void — no walls, no doors, no floor. Stephen Cheng opened the gallery in 2015 in an industrial high-rise block in Aberdeen harbour. It is a “black cube”: an inversion of the white-walled space that has been the default for showing art since the 20th century. Born in New York, Cheng — the grandson of Hong Kong shipping magnate Yue Kong-Pao — was educated at Eton, and later Harvard where he studied photography and film history (and took classes with Nan Goldin). Darkrooms and cinemas became his favourite haunts. It was in dark spaces where art entered his life “in an irrevocable way”. 更多…
2025-03-07	Tishan Hsu at the San Jose Museum of Modern Art
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2025-03-05	Raha Raissnia in There Is No Center, ROH Projects, Jakarta
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2025-03-01	Reina Sugihara, Empty Gallery by Aaina Bhargava in Artforum
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2025-02-19	Reina Sugihara, Respirare, by Michele Chan in ArtAsiaPacific
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2025-02-14	Doris Guo, Bent at the Window at Kunstverein Braunschweig
	The artistic practice of DORIS GUO (1992 in San Francisco, lives and works in Oslo), spanning a variety of media, is based on capturing moods and precise observations, distilled into multi-layered works and atmospheres. Her materials often consist of used, everyday objects, brought into relation through Guo’s sensitive combinations. For her first institutional solo exhibition Bent at the Window* at Kunstverein Braunschweig, Guo develops new works and extends existing ones in dialogue with the exhibition space: among them, self-built projectors that cast static images onto the walls, as well as a new series of sculptures that further deepen Guo’s interest in translating objects into alternative material and mental states. The exhibition will be on view from March 15 through June 1, 2025. Curator: Junia Thiede 更多…
2025-02-14	Tishan Hsu in Sense Unknown at MO.CO Montpellier
	At MO.CO., Sense Unknown brings together more than one hundred works by thirty artists, offering an open and porous journey between materials, experiments, disciplines, and eras, with the aim of testing reality – or what we know of it. The exhibition will be on view from February 15 through May 18, 2025. In Chaos : Making a New Science (1987), James Gleick points out that the development of a scientific theory is often based on the repetition of experiments and the recurrence of an event. An isolated event is therefore considered an error. However, in the research process, serendipity, chance discovery, accident, and the acceptance of a twist of faith open up new pathways that were beyond our predictions. We then move from known worlds into the unknown. The artists in the exhibition Sense Unknown sometimes come from scientific backgrounds, while others have worked with scientists or are simply passionate about one of these fields. They share a common interest in experimenting with the unknown through the reinterpretation of scientific forms and processes. Participating artists include: Isabelle Andriessen, Art Orienté Objet, Berdaguer & Péjus, Hicham Berrada, Morgan Courtois, HR Giger, Joey Holder, Tishan Hsu, Cooper Jacoby, Yunchul Kim, Josh Kline, Roy Köhnke, Kinke Kooi, Tetsumi Kudo, Emma Kunz, Candice Lin ; Pei-Ying Lin, Špela Petrič, Dimitris Stamatis & Jasmina Weiss ; Mary Maggic, Guadalupe Maravilla, Nam June Paik, Jean Painlevé, Bernard Palissy, Eduardo Paolozzi, Luboš Plný, Lea Porsager, Josephine Pryde, Victorien Sardou, Jeremy Shaw, Kiki Smith, Alina Szapocznikow, Haena Yoo, Anna Zemánková. 更多…
2025-01-18	Taro Masushio, Cool Invitations, XYZ Collective
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2025-01-18	Xper.Xr, Condo London, Hot Wheels
	Xper.Xr will participating in a two-person exhibition with Delia Gonzalez at Hot Wheels Athens London, as part of Condo London, taking place 18 January through 15 February, 2025. 更多…