Hong Kong, July 10 – August 5, 2016, http://www.artofcuhk.hk/
Yet another hike up into the mountains of CUHK, this time for the MFA exhibition. Same as the prior BA exhibition, also this show spanned two locations – the CUHK Museum and the studio spaces on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd floors of the Cheng Ming Building.
Compared with a youthful energy of trying to do one’s best of the BA show, the MFA students seem to have been caught up much more with the realities of everyday life. A lot of the works reflected a certain emotional reaction or incorporation of a daily practice into the artworks. There has been a section of artists continuing in the traditional Chinese painting style of CUHK. Someone with more expertise in that field has to comment on the contents of those, but they are difficult to contextualize in relation to contemporary art and everyday experience, other than understanding them as a dream-like escape from the everyday. From other works, I could feel a sense of desperation and disillusionment with life, some artists reacting through depression, others through irony and humor. But many of the works seemed to be very much inward-looking. Hong Kong on one hand seems to be open and international, but on the other hand, as it was the case of this exhibition, can feel village-like and self-referential. The artists were working with their emotions, with their immediate environment, but it was all very “local” issues that have been addressed, whether personal, in family or in urban space.
The exhibition has been a big contrast to what I have seen in Korea last year. There a young generation of artists has been rising, orienting themselves along post-internet art and other art world “fashions”, but merging it with their own sensibilities. There has been a lot of derivative works, not always good quality, but one could feel the urge to try to find the next new thing. There was a lot of looking abroad, to overseas art centers in the U.S. and in Europe. The closeness of art and graphic design was also prominent, and maybe it was this interaction which made artists move forward so quickly – designers have no choice but to follow the latest trends or create them to be ahead. And Korean artists got a bit caught up in this too.
At the CUHK exhibition, I could not sense anything of this. The overall feeling was rather one of giving up in advance – disillusionment and retreat. It may have to do with the circumstances in Hong Kong, where getting an MFA instead on and MBA may indeed be a sign of retreat from the career expectations of one’s parents or one’s own dreams, into a private secluded space where one can be him/herself. There have been also little attempts at the crossover towards design, except for the quite innovative, probably commissioned, MFA catalogue: a set of page-size stickers that could be applied DIY-style in any old book by the reader.
The CUHK museum exhibition came across a bit bland. The selection seemed to stress a balance of different media and approaches, which made nothing stand out too much. There have been two works developing “fake” products with a humorous undertone, which attracted attention through their guerilla marketing-like tactics (probably a result of the author’s prior employment at advertising agencies). Another artist showed off his technical drawing skills (from his prior engineering training) in order to present a theory of everything. Here a few images from the museum.
The most interesting part of the MFA graduation show was been located in the 3F of the Cheng Ming Building where a number of artists set up their own mini-solo shows. The freedom to configure the space to their liking, more freely than in the museum, was an opportunity, which some artists made use of better than others. There have been three very traditional ink-paintings-on-white-wall exhibitions, the circular display of one work being the most innovative of them, but also three much more daring approaches. One tried to recreate an urban scene with metal poles, which I suspected to be functioning as musical instruments, but the unfortunately were not during my visit. Another one was an interactive cinema bringing together a number of video works. And yet another one was a very clean and precise painting-meets-installation setting making use of 1990’s men’s magazines as a source.
The MFA 1st year student’s exhibition was sandwiched in between this two locations. Probably the most memorable has been the empty milk powder can and two grasshoppers on a background referencing the shape of a traditional Chinese fan painting. This was not memorable for its perfection, but for raising the question how this can make it into an art exhibition today at all. This was not irony, but bad humor. The remainder of the works followed the line I sketched above.
