“Just as he is uninterested in entrenching binaries of fact and fiction, resistance and capitulation, or authorship and appropriation, Taro Masushio is likewise wary of identitarian overdeterminations and the corollary imperative to verify and reveal any singular “truths” behind his photography. He sets himself the task of resisting the medium’s claims to the indisputable legibility of subjects in front of or behind its lens. His latest show at Empty Gallery, Hong Kong (all works 2024), juxtaposes two types of photography—UV prints on found cardboard and more traditional still lifes—to complicate the medium’s supposed technological purchase on truth and transparency. It highlights his proclivity for playful formal experimentation when faced with the camera’s potential for capture, which has often proven symptomatic of the colonial hunger for knowledge, order, and coherence. Through his shrewd sequencing of images, the artist seems to suggest that the medium of photography holds the capacity to conceal and equivocate, despite its presumed indexical fidelity to the “real.””
Empty Gallery is pleased to support Para Site’s 2024 Benefit Auction. The works by Doris Guo & Weili Wang and James T. Hong are available to view on 9/F of H Queen’s in Hong Kong through 17 November, the silent auction will continue through November 20, 10.30pm HKT.
In issue 141 of ArtAsiaPacific, deputy editor H.G. Masters covered James T. Hong’s Apologies, which was on view at Empty Gallery from June through August 2024.
At the Renaissance Society, Gork develops a new project for the Intermissions series in collaboration with performer, sound artist, and electronic musician Laetitia Sonami. Directly engaging with this unique setting, Gork introduces new physical elements into the empty gallery space, positions multiple sound sources, and experiments with the room’s unusual acoustics. For two days, Sonami and Gork mobilize and shape the sound within this environment across various listening zones. Visitors are free to come and go during the durational performance.
Curated by Karsten Lund with Michael Harrison
Special thanks to Meyer Sound, Berkeley, CA.
On the weekend of November 8-9, Winsome Wong will present ‘Love Song: the bittersweet crumbs of having them at home’ in collaboration with Vunkwan Tam and Annisa Cheung, at Tai Kwun’s HICCUP, a festival of body and sound co-presented by Tai Kwun Contemporary, Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong (Sound Forms), and Per.Platform.
For the full schedule, see the link below.
Doris Guo’s solo presentation, The Jar, is on view November 1st through 24th at K4 in Oslo, a non-profit gallery space for video art and moving image. The exhibition is open on Saturdays and Sundays, please see the link below for further details.
“The starting point of this exhibition was based on my desire for having always wanted to make a horror movie. At many periods of my life, especially busy and stressful ones, I take comfort in throwing on any horror movie, cheesy and predictable with familiar sounds and jump scares. Amongst the many horror tropes one might experience, I particularly get a lot of enjoyment out of police and military being utterly useless. It’s an assumed, natural fact of the characters and by the general audience. I wanted to set my horror movie in a particular style of housing in the Pacific Northwest.”
Cici Wu’s solo exhibition Travel Star Between Ceasing and Arising is now on view at Scheusal Berlin from October 26th onwards.
Jes Fan’s debut New York solo exhibition is now on view at Andrew Kreps Gallery’s 55 Walker space through December 20, 2024.
In his practice, Fan employs the often invisible substances that shape our experiences with the world to explore the often malleable ways in which biology, ecology and identity intersect. Working in close collaboration with biologists, farmers, and medical universities, Fan’s transdisciplinary projects examine how sculpture can be used as a tool to unravel material from its accumulated history.
The exhibition continues Fan’s episodic project Sites of Wounding, first initiated in 2020. A pool of boiling soy milk is positioned at the gallery’s entrance, and utilized as a projection surface for a visceral video documenting a homemade endoscopy. Upon looking at the congealed skin-like surface of the white liquid, the viewer is not offered a reflection, but instead offered an interior view of the artist’s body. This underscores a larger interest in Fan’s work, of collapsing the membrane that demarcates the external body from an internal space. New sculptures belonging to the project’s second chapter are informed by Fan’s research into Agarwood trees, as well as an interest in how injuries are capable of generating new meaning. Native to Hong Kong, the trees produce a fragrant resin in response to stress, and trauma. In the healing process, the tree’s fibers harden, building density and structure around the wound. To create sculptures in this chapter, Fan 3D prints CT scans of his own musculature and combines traditional techniques such as glass-blowing. Mimicking the formal qualities of the infected Agarwood tree, these abstracted forms point to the transformative potential of trauma carried by the human body. A punctured freestanding wall furthers this inquiry, inviting viewers to peer at the sculpture embedded within it.
Scientia Sexualis is an ambitious group survey of contemporary artists whose works take up the fraught relationship between sex, gender, and science. Organized by Jennifer Doyle (Professor of English, University of California, Riverside) and Jeanne Vaccaro (Assistant Professor of Transgender Studies and Museum Studies, University of Kansas), the exhibition is realized as part of the ambitious collaboration across arts institutions throughout Southern California known as PST ART: Art & Science Collide led by the Getty. It runs from October 5, 2024 through March 2, 2025.
Featured artists include: Panteha Abareshi, Dotty Attie, Louise Bourgeois, Nao Bustamante, Andrea Carlson, Demian DinéYazhi’, Nicole Eisenman, El Palomar, dean erdmann, Jes Fan, Nicki Green, Oliver Husain & Kerstin Schroedinger, Xandra Ibarra, KING COBRA (documented as Doreen Lynette Garner), Joseph Liatela, Candice Lin, Carlos Motta, Wangechi Mutu, Young Joon Kwak & Gala Porras-Kim, Cauleen Smith, P. Staff, Joey Terrill, Chris E. Vargas, Millie Wilson, and Geo Wyex.
I Am Standing in the Middle of the Information Highway and Laughing is a new exhibition curated by Raha Raissnia and Martin Germann, opening August 16 through October 18 at the Argo Factory in Tehran. Taking its title from late artist Jonas Mekas’ Manifesto Anti-100 years of Cinema, a performative exhibition in Tehran will unfold over two different episodes. Its main aim is to celebrate the unbound energy of collaborative work and friendship on the one hand and moments of reflection and stillness on the other. Its point of departure is the Manichean binary between darkness and light, as sine qua non condition for the existence of technologically mediated images.
The second chapter of the exhibition, curated by Martin Germann, opens on Friday, September 27, with Marco Fusinato, James T. Hong, Tiffany Sia and Sam Lewitt.
Dislocated Love (Flower, Bird, Bamboo and Rock), 2023
Ink and mineral pigment on rice paper 63 x 96 cm x 3 cm 24.80 x 37.79 x 1.18 inches
Foreign Object #2 Umbra And Penumbra (Dolphin), 2023
Bamboo wire, paper, Raspberry Pi 4b, USB webcam, neopixel ring LED, cable, memory card 73 x 29 x 99 cm 28.74 x 11.41 x 38.87 inches
Re:Mothlight (Wash Away), 2023
Ink, mineral pigment, rice paper 73 x 106 x 3 cm 28.74 x 41.73 x 1.18 inches
Re:Mothlight (Changing Brightness 01), 2023
Ink on paper 60 x 74 x 3 cm 23.6 x 29.1 x 1.2 inches
Empty Gallery 很高興為大家帶來紐約香港藝術家武雨濛在畫廊的第二個個展《另刂》。武雨濛把電影製作簡約至其最基礎及最原始的組成要素,她創作的物件、錄像和裝置把電影語言想像和結構的要領擴展到各種媒介。武雨濛常從地方性的微觀歷史或文獻檔案出發,以電影框架為方法處理並反思,社會、文化及歷史歸屬的超個人敘事建構人們自我經驗的方式。創作進行於三個對藝術家而言具有強烈情感依戀和激烈意識形態衝突的城市,香港、北京和紐約;是次展覽將展示藝術家在過去兩年間完成的一系列新作。
展覽重點作品〈另刂 〉是與北京協作人Yuan Yuan共同製作的電影,把幕間字幕及旁白片段與16米厘菲林和 DV 錄像作互為交織。此作品融匯幻想電影、風景電影和家庭電影的面向,結合於曼哈頓唐人街、香港和北京拍攝的片段,深入反映由種種虛構秩序所支配一系列受壓、快速轉移的時間性之間身體及精神的行為。遊移於標誌式建築與無名街道之間,處處是刻印著溫柔與暴烈的殘影、自由與壓制痕跡的空間,滲滿著個人與集體的記憶——不同說話、思維與感受模式之間互相摩擦時所偶發的靈光,是〈另刂 〉讓人迷醉之所在。
投映雕塑〈Tsaiyun (Rosy Cloud) Bridge〉 在多個方面可作為〈Difference〉的一個對應,它不落墨於外在行動,而是從內省、沉思的角度探索相近的主題。運用重攝和定格動畫,武雨濛把令人不安的熟悉感與本質上的陌生感視為一類中國的原型形象。她從人民畫報(在共產主義中國成立初期由國家承辦並於國際間發行的期刊)的舊刊中取材,透過節奏與情境的轉移,為這些素材賦予個人意義,並進而以剪紙和尋常物品裝飾架框。〈Tsaiyun〉探索存在於記憶與政治宣傳、個人與官方間縫隙中的空間,指向過度決定的歷史如何複雜化真實性和文化歸屬這兩種觀念的分析。藉著把這些圖像放置在傳統的橋樑形式上,武雨濛似乎展示出重新衡量我們個人假定原生籍的自主潛力。
同場展出的另一組新近創作拼貼作品、水墨畫,和燈籠雕塑呼應著這種對重溯和重涉個人與集體歷史的關注;這些作品透過參與時間、記憶和歸屬感界限的心理社會動能,反應著相類近的情感。繼續武雨濛長久以來在發展推測記錄器材的興趣,作品〈Foreign Object No. 2〉(海豚形狀的混合燈籠攝影機)提供一種實驗觀看的方式,一件擺脫歸化觀點的工具。而另一系列新作參材布拉哈格(Stan Brakhage)1963年的實驗電影《飛蛾之光》(Mothlight)。武雨濛在布拉哈格有機與無攝影機的想法中找到了在歐洲中心視覺技術界限以外的一條潛在通道,她使用礦物顏料仔細地描募了這些電影膠片的部份。這些水墨畫溢滿一種安靜的美感和一種舊時的感覺,一種對預設媒介和參照點的變形——從流動到靜止,從美國前衛藝街到花鳥繪畫。武雨濛借鑑遠古與現代的源材,以描摹進行一場蛻變的活躍過程,在當中新記憶的濕潤輪廓和音調變化自純然歷史的延緩空間裡浮現。
過去,武雨濛曾提及她對其所說「人世道」的不懈追尋,在〈另刂 〉,她循沿多種路線和途徑尋找方法來就身分作交涉,她取道社會歸屬感和政治團結具延展性的網絡,而非地理界定或國籍觀念。她嘗試詰問後殖民和離散理論正走往的死胡同,提出另一種身分概念,建基在流動的理型以及留駐、遷離與回歸的姿態,強調在不連貫時間性中過道的美善。在主體定位受到更嚴格的標定、分類和監管的時刻,武雨濛的作品奮力灌溉一個臨時自治之地——一個的流動空間,於當中不決定性純粹而脆弱的潛在力能得以繼續存在;一回腮紅之肌分水劃域的驚鴻一瞥。
特別感謝: Marilyn Brakhage, Mark Toscano, Canyon Cinema, Fred Camper, 生和隆美術扎作, 梁金華, 黃湲婷, Fai Wan, 李倩瑩, 鄭成然, 劉文棟, 余宗翰, 陳嘉賢, 鞠亭亭, 潘慧欣, 譚煥坤, Victor Au, 王潔茜, Margaret Lee, 何穎雅, 莫小菲, Taro Masushio, Amy Lien, Jaime Chu, 瞿暢, 陳巧真 和 黃智銓.