ART PRESENTATION:Pak Sheung Chuen
Pak Sheung Chuen’s work is based on the artist’s belief that through his artworks he can bring to the fore the interwoven nature of reality and the imaginary. His works often reflect upon contemporary Hong Kong, his home town since early childhood, through personal observations and conceptual engagement with everyday life as well as on the conflict between an ideal world and reality.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: gb agency Archive
Pak Sheung Chuen, one of Hong Kong’s most respected artists, presents “Horizontal Line / Vertical Line / Square / Circle: 12 Instruction Pieces”, his third solo exhibition at gb agency. His work reflects upon the contemporary metropolis through personal observations and conceptual engagement with everyday life in the city and on the conflict between an ideal world and reality, which he tries to address with poetic solutions that strive to merge both worlds. Under the pandemic situation, travelling has become impossible. Instead of sending artworks for installation, the artist sent 12 instruction pieces to the gallery. Following these rules and instructions, the artworks – which focus on the horizontal and vertical line, the square, the circle, and the current situation in Hong Kong – were made without the restrictions of distance. Pak Sheung Chuen was born in 1977 in Fujian, China. He obtained his BA in Fine Arts and Theology from Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2002. Pak immigrated, with his family, to Hong Kong before the Handover in the 1980s. He is a multidisciplinary artist interested in calibrating and transforming uncontrollable variables. Chance encounters, conversations and discovery all play a part in his projects, which reveal to him and his audience something about the nature of social engagement each time. His current work is drawn from the pre- and post worlds of the Handover in Hong Kong, as well as South East Asia’s history of performance art. For his series “Waiting for A Friend (Without An Appointment” (2006), he stood outside a train station in Hong Kong until he recognised someone walking out, and in “Going Home” (2010), he stood in a museum lobby asking people if they would invite him into their homes. At the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, Pak represented Hong Kong with four of his series, all with the linking theme of viewing the world through an artist’s, or creative’s lens. The works of Pak Sheung Chuen are transient in, or barely passing through the institutions of the art world: they are conceived, developed and carried out at its edges. Their raw materials – everyday affairs and situations, no matter how unremarkable- redefine nonetheless the role of the audience. Everything is in motion: ideas are translated into text which becomes the basis of a dialogue, which then takes form in space. The works are of the here and now. Pak Sheung Chuen manufactures the very space of his work, and instigates an encounter that triggers reflection. Though it doesn’t leave a trace, the work is developed on-site, thus creating its own context.
Photo: Pak Sheung Chuen, Sketch for the exhibition “Horizontal Line / Vertical Line / Square / Circle: 12 Instruction Pieces”, gb agency, 2021, © Pak Sheung Chuen, Courtesy the artist and gb agency
Info: gb agency, 18 rue des Quatre Fils, 75003 Paris, Duration: 9/1-25/2/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-13:00 & 14:00-19:00, https://gbagency.fr
