AU Hoi Lam: Painting, Its Reasons to Be
Artist’s Reception
19 October 2024（Saturday）2-6 pm
Hanart TZ Gallery
2/F Mai On Ind. Bldg., 17-21 Kung Yip St., Kwai Chung, Hong Kong
The exhibition continues through 30 November 2024
區凱琳 《沉思在隱密的房子 (另一刻) 》 2024 鉛筆、塑膠彩、麻布 80 x 120 x 5 公分
AU Hoi Lam Contemplating in a Hermetic House (An Other Moment) 2024
Pencil and acrylic on linen 80 x 120 x 5 cm
Hanart TZ Gallery is proud to present AU Hoi Lam’s new solo exhibition Painting, Its Reasons to Be. The opening reception will take place at Hanart TZ Gallery on October 19, 2024 (Saturday), from 2 to 6 pm, in the presence of the artist.
The French contemporary philosopher Michel Foucault posed the question, “Why should a painter work if he is not transformed by his own painting?” For Foucault, the transformation of the self through one’s own knowledge is a process that approaches the aesthetic experience. Through the artist’s painting process, a painting yet to be completed gradually transforms. Equally, the artist’s temperament, thoughts, and endurance are shaped and transformed through the painting.
No matter why he or she paints, an artist’s conviction throughout the long creative process that “it must be this way” informs the choices this unique individual makes over and over again in the name of value and of meaning. What is produced by these choices is not a random cause or effect, nor is it a universal truth or knowledge.
AU Hoi Lam views the creation of art as a method of “Care of the Self”. She equally uses the language of painting and self-writing as vehicles to change and ultimately to transform herself. Her contemplations on life and her commitment to craftsmanship are all integrated into her art. From the brewing of an idea, to stretching the canvas, mixing the paints, and making and installing the work, for AU the entire creative process is a means of exercise and ascesis of the self. It is a process of retrospection, contemplation, remembrance, oblivion; of otium, vigilance, prayer, relaxation; of soothing and cultivation.
“A painter is like a unique radio endowed with the sensibility and the will to receive, translate, and interpret the pulse, secret codes, and breath flowing between the cosmos and the human world, and then to transmit the resulting sounds through a singular loudspeaker. Because each loudspeaker has its own unique conditions and limitations, it is able to transmit just exactly those sounds.” AU Hoi Lam believes that the images she can only vaguely perceive and sense in her mind must be painted on canvas before she can truly see them.
AU Hoi Lam’s paintings combine a complex interweaving of techniques: minimalist geometric abstraction, straightforward writing-brushwork, cryptic text-symbol-image, and contemplative, intensive repetition. Through this interweaving she shapes metaphysical landscapes that are at once microscopic and macroscopic, infinitesimal and cosmic, bringing into being an introspective and meticulously articulated cartography of the spirit.
The starting point for AU Hoi Lam’s creative process is like an encrypted private language that is difficult to decode: but within the autobiographical nature of her works is concealed a distinctive element of healing. Through a constant refinement of craftsmanship, the artist’s private emotions and thoughts are transposed into open and intuitive abstract landscapes. As viewers look at the paintings and wander among them, they can instinctively grasp and appreciate the beauty of the abstract realm.
It has been eight years since AU Ho Lam’s last solo show. Painting: Its Reasons to Be presents a range of more than 30 works selected from different periods, illuminating distinctive aspects of AU’s creative work over the past twenty years. Here, it is the paintings themselves that dialectically demonstrate the “reasons for painting”. Most of these works are being displayed in public for the first time, including the artist’s latest series Contemplating in a Hermetic House (2021-2024) and Prime Number or Imperfect Square (2024).
Contemplating in a Hermetic House comprises 10 works in pencil and acrylic on linen, including Portal, Transparent, Opaque, Puzzle Hong Kong Island and Cosmic Memento. Within this series there are three pairs of works in which one work appears to be an intricate magnification or inverse of the other, exploring the idea of intertextuality in painting. In the Prime Number or Imperfect Square series, seven prime numbers (1801, 1889, 1949, 1951, 1973, 1997, 1999) are separately represented as precisely calculated frames within a grid diagram. Within each frame is introduced a set of nearly perfect but imperfect squares, creating perceptible forms of numbers and geometry.
The exhibition continues through 30 November 2024.
(Translation by Valerie C. Doran)
區凱琳 《沉思在隱密的房子(拼圖香港島)》 2022-2023 鉛筆、塑膠彩、麻布 80 x 120 x 5 公分
AU Hoi Lam Contemplating in a Hermetic House (Puzzle Hong Kong Island) 2022-2023
Pencil and acrylic on linen 80 x 120 x 5 cm
區凱琳 《沉思在隱密的房子(宇宙紀念物) 》 2023 鉛筆、塑膠彩、麻布 80 x 120 x 5 公分
AU Hoi Lam Contemplating in a Hermetic House (Cosmic Memento) 2023
Pencil and acrylic on linen 80 x 120 x 5 cm
AU Hoi Lam
AU Hoi Lam graduated from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (MFA 2004, MPhil in Philosophy 2009). She has been creating art since the early 2000s, focusing on drawing and painting. She also likes exploring text art and installation art.
AU’s work is gentle and calm, using the language of painting to express profound but subtle ideas and emotions, embodying the delicate relationship between the individual and the lifeworld. She devotes herself to introspective thoughts and craftsmanship: capturing the ephemerals; exploring the relationships between text, time and space; contemplating the ways artwork exists; practising memento, reminiscence and forgetting. Depending on the subject matter, her works sometimes have unforeseen leaps in appearance, revealing undercurrents of paradox.
AU has been awarded the Alexandre Yersin Excellence Scholarship (Consulate General of France, 2001), Hong Kong Arts Development Awards – Award for Young Artist (Visual Arts) (Hong Kong Arts Development Council, 2013) and New York Fellowship (Asian Cultural Council, 2019). Her works are collected by the Hong Kong Museum of Art, M+, University of Cambridge and private collections.
AU has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including Au Hoi Lam: Painting, Its Reasons to Be (Hanart TZ Gallery 2024), The Dimensions of Living: A House is (JCCAC Gallery, Hong Kong 2020), From Ocean to Horizon (Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art [CFCCA], Manchester 2017), Interval in Space (Contemporary Art Center NAIRS, Scuol 2017), Au Hoi Lam: Memorandum ( _____ )(Art Basel Hong Kong, 2016), Au Hoi Lam, solo at Osage Gallery in Start Art Fair 2015 (Saatchi Gallery, London 2015), IV Moscow International Biennale for Young Art: A Time for Dream (Museum of Moscow, 2014), Au Hoi Lam: My Father is Over the Ocean. Shanghai Postscript (Osage Gallery, Shanghai 2014), Time Traveler – Au Hoi Lam & Sara Tse (Espace Louis Vuitton, Hong Kong 2014), Art Cologne 2014 (Koelnmesse GmbH, Cologne 2014), Woman-Home: In the Name of Asian Female Artists (Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, 2014), Au Hoi Lam: My Father is Over the Ocean (Osage Gallery, Hong Kong, 2013), OPEN 15. International Exhibition of Sculptures and Installations (Lido, Venice 2012), Art:gwangju 2012 (KDJ Convention Center, Gwangju 2012), Reversing Horizons: Artist Reflections of the Hong Kong Handover 10th Anniversary (Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai, Shanghai, China 2007), among others.
區凱琳 《十一個三百六十五天 (365 x 11 = 73 x 55) 》 2009 塑膠彩、木顏色、麻布 122 x 122 x 5 公分
AU Hoi Lam Eleven 365 Days (365 x 11 = 73 x 55) 2009
Acrylic & colour pencil on linen 122 x 122 x 5 cm
A painter
is like a unique radio endowed with the sensibility and the will to receive, translate, and transduce the pulse, secret codes, and breath flowing the cosmos and the human world, and then to transmit these through a singular loudspeaker. Because each loudspeaker has its own unique conditions and limitations, it has the capability to transmit just exactly that sound.
What is vaguely perceived and sensed in the mind
is materialised in a painting
where it can be seen with the eyes and
once seen, may feel familiar or may feel strange
A time for introspection
for inner vision
for going beyond the laws of physics and geographical frameworks
for being invisible in everyday life
like calculus, which may or may not contain a world.
A painting is not just a material object; to paint is the perpetual act of realising an unrealised concept.
Stories
Some paintings have stories behind them. The story fades away over time; the story dissolves in the painting process. When it is transformed into an abstract painting, it becomes free: there is no more obsessive thinking, no more sadness, and no future necessity to prove its truth.
To speak about it is akin to throwing it into the sea. What cannot be clearly expressed will never become clear. If you are the one looking at my paintings–if there is such a person–do not fall into the trap of words. When you really look at a painting, it is like breathing another kind of air.
Within sights I have never seen before
I want to see
metaphysical imagery.
I am a hermetic house
a house of quiet contemplation, where daydreams emerge.
AU Hoi Lam 2024
(Translation by Valerie C. Doran)
區凱琳 《1973 (質數或不完美的正方形)》 2024 鉛筆、塑膠彩、木畫板 30.5 x 40.5 x 1.1 公分
AU Hoi Lam 1973 (Prime Number or Imperfect Square) 2024
Pencil and acrylic on wooden drawing board 30.5 x 40.5 x 1.1 cm
區凱琳 《1999 (質數或不完美的正方形)》 2024 鉛筆、塑膠彩、木畫板 30.5 x 40.5 x 1.1 公分
AU Hoi Lam 1999 (Prime Number or Imperfect Square) 2024
Pencil and acrylic on wooden drawing board 30.5 x 40.5 x 1.1 cm
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