Unusual Monument: of permeability and silence of our time, 2015, soundproof wall and chalk, 170 x 250 x 10 cm
Artworks featured in First, then and after are each, registered by various artists, an interpretation about the concept of time and space in response to one image – a knot. The curatorial direction designed for this exhibition invites new perspective. It engenders an alternative communication beyond language through one single image of a knot in simple composition. On the quotidian level, the use of knots is much embedded in the deep of our everyday experience that the act of knotting – the sequence and movements - has mostly escaped consciousness and attention. Almost an indefinite, open-ended symbol given by the curator, the ten artists respond to the image of knot with their own works.
Leung sees time as a witness of tension between human civilization and nature. Inspired by ruins as a civilization footprint that is commonly taken over by nature over time, the work was created as a fictional monument, so distant in the future, that no contemporaries or history would even recognize it. It stands silently as a witness of our time. On the ground writes “we contemplate the ravages of time… we are the sole survirors of an entire nation that is no more,” excepts from The Salon of 1767 - Before the Ruin, by Denis Diderot.
First, Then and After
Group exhibition, Gallery Exit, Hong Kong, 29 May - 4 Jul, 2015
(Installation view)
Curator: KWOK Ying
Artists: CHING Chin Wai, KONG Chun Hei, Sarah LAI, Lewis LAU, LAW Man Lok, Gabriel LEUNG, Otto LI, Annie WAN, Cam WONG and Morgan WONG