Through a new lens
Two art exhibitions currently running in Hong Kong offer a glimpse into the range of artistic expressions and practices in vogue on the Chinese mainland. Chitralekha Basu reports.
Two art exhibitions stand out in a crowd of others running in Hong Kong this summer. On the face of it, The Great Manual of (Post) Human Anatomy, at Hanart TZ Gallery, and Awakened by Nature, presented jointly by PhillipsX and White Space, couldn't be more different, except perhaps that the curatorial duo behind the former as well as the two artists featured in the latter are from the Chinese mainland, and all four are women.
However, since all 16 artists in the two exhibitions have Chinese roots, when viewed side by side, they give us a glimpse into the rather expansive range of artistic expressions and practices emerging from the mainland at this moment.
Soft pastel colors dominate the concrete, industrial-looking walls of the sprawling PhillipsX gallery in the West Kowloon Cultural District - the venue of Awakened by Nature. The exhibition is meant to showcase new works by Li Shurui - who divides her time between Beijing and Dali, Yunnan province - and the Shanghai-based Shi Zhiying. Both artists are in their early 40s. And both seem to prefer a lighthearted, playful approach. There is a disarming simplicity about the shiny, smooth rotundity of Li's board-mounted pair of stacked pots and Shi's images of auspicious guardian lion sculptures. Traditionally, these are meant to look menacing, but in Shi's renderings, the mythical beasts wear a smirk. One of them is even seen tossing a blue ball into the air.
