沈莘：信念游移｜香港手語

Beeple: Technology is something that affects all of us. And I think exploring how that is affecting the human experience through art, to me, is really interesting.

It’s called Human One because this is sort of trying to imagine the story of the first person who was born in the Metaverse–obviously very far in the future–somebody who, their entire consciousness is online in this virtual space. They don’t have a physical body, and they are sort of trapped inside this computer, but at the same time, they have all these crazy worlds to explore and all of this stuff that they can continue, sort of like moving through.

The overall human experience is one that is very deeply personal to us, and so having one person to see all of these weird things alone is more analogous to what life is actually like.

If you look at the pictures, a lot of them have the same little 3D model looking at something crazy or big or beautiful or something. Like, that little dude has seen all these crazy things and it’s like he is on this journey and has seen and done a bunch of different things.

So the process between making Human One and making the Everydays [series] is different in some respects, but similar in some respects as well. It’s similar in that I'm using the same program and the same type of techniques in terms of bringing in 3D objects and placing them and lighting them. But it’s a bit different, obviously, because it’s in this framework of this physical sculpture.

It also uses a bunch of techniques that I learned through a decade of making concert visuals, namely projection mapping. And so, I think bringing the tools and techniques of concert visual productions into fine art is something that I don’t really think has been done a huge amount before and something that I think is really interesting, especially given how powerful these tools are now.

I think when people see digital art, they expect it to just be like a flat video on a TV screen or something on your phone. And so I really wanted to make something that combined these two worlds in a way that it felt like both of them needed to exist. The physical part is very necessary for it and the digital part is also very necessary for it.

When we were kids, everybody drew, everybody made art, but then everybody stopped. Like, almost all people stopped making art. And why is that? I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that people get in their head about, ‘oh, is this good? Is this, like, good enough?’ Or like, ‘are people are going to think this is stupid?’

And I think kids don’t think about what are other people going to think about the artwork. They just draw what they want to draw. And I think if you can get back into that mindset and it’s very hard to do, it’s very hard to listen to that tiny voice that is telling you the picture that you want to make and not what you think everybody else wants to see.

You will make work that will resonate much more with yourself and with everybody else because people can inherently tell no matter what the picture is, I believe, when you made something that you really care about.

And so each day I’m trying to listen to that tiny voice in my head that is pointing me into the picture I’m most excited about making. Sometimes those are pretty weird! [laughs]

RAJ REWAL: The structural systems, building materials, construction techniques . . . all of that in themselves are also very important for an architect, the craft of architecture. Structure–I’ve always been very keenly interested in because the structure has a logic in mathematics. And I think mathematics is also almost a kind of a religion, if you like, or a spiritual concern to it.

I was very interested to keep the views opened up with small gateways and passageways, so you’re always curious what is next. The whole idea was that we are in the courtyard, which you know it’s a very hot day, but it’s quite cool in a way. Because the air flows through these spaces to keep it cool, so these are some lessons which I’ve learnt from traditional architecture. It creates a sort of microclimate, so you don’t need too much air conditioning. As you can see, the vocabulary of the design is the same, but there is a change in each one of them. And that’s very important for me in doing architecture. It’s not a dull repetition of each building type. There is a kind of sequence of moments along.

The Pragati Maidan, it was to be built in a very short time, One year or one and a half years’ time. Once, I got very annoyed on the site. There was rain. They [the workers] had all come inside the building. They were cooking in there; the hall was being spoiled. You know you wanted to cut shuttering marks or the wood marks to be beautifully kept. And they were putting the flames next to this. I got very angry. And then I realised what a fool I am. You know, people are living here. I mean . . . I, for the first time, came to [know about] the reality of the poverty of India. That made me a different man. So, I think the architecture of, let’s say, humanism; That I have to work towards to fulfil for them something, that’s how I changed when I got the housing projects, low-cost housing. I was willing to take on anything to think about what to do for them. What intrigued me very much was the modernism of the type [of] Le Corbusier, modernism at that time was very sterile, in my opinion. In Europe and everywhere, it was becoming just a box and very . . . I would say functionalism at its worst, but Le Corbusier was functional, was structural, but it had an expression. And that intrigued me, this powerful expression.

I think a building should have a ‘rasa’. So, whenever I’m designing a building that right from the beginning, I wanted to have an expression or a feeling or a flavour. Parliament Library gave me a big canvas to do different kinds of structure for different kinds of spaces which are within the building. The idea of enlightenment . . . The library should enlighten the parliament. I wanted the building to be a kind of a guru to the parliament; the idea of the guru is very much there. A wise man who advises in Asian or all cultures, the king. So, I perceived that the parliament is like a king, democratic consensus of the king today. The library, which is the idea of enlightenment, it’s connected with that.

I’m happy to see many of the younger architects from all over the world who have come here. To understand the values of not making blocks, but to make buildings which have this low-rise, high-density quality, where you meet your neighbours with climate and culture. Somehow, if they all combine and respect the basic expression, I think [that is something that] holds [everything] together. At least, that’s the way I think.

(Original language: Cantonese)

LEUNG KUI TING: Landscape-oriented painting emphasises movement across spaces, while vertical-oriented painting accentuates the foreground, mid-ground, and background. Generating ‘qiyun’ (rhythmic vitality) on paper is the essence of Chinese painting.

The most distinctive feature of Chinese painting is the use of ink. Traditionally, the basic tones of ink are ‘jiao’ (scorched), ‘nong’ (condensed), ‘zhong’ (heavy), ‘dan’ (pale) and ‘qing’ (clear). You wet the paper, and then add light ink to it, resulting in a solid and vigorous tone. And the use of ‘negative’ space in the composition would rely on the painter’s self-cultivation and experience.

Every artwork is metaphorical. In ‘Beyond Form’, brushstrokes are crisscrossing and overlapping in a two-dimensional space. Sometimes, I employ traditional imagery in my works, and other times, I use geometric patterns which are more abstract. I bring all these elements into the same space, organising and interspersing them throughout the space. In fact, I want to turn a two-dimensional space into a three-dimensional one. The imagery could be something traditional and created by transfer or be depicted in a way to connect with tradition. In fact, only since 1985 have I started exploring ink painting by painting from life. I currently don’t have a specific preference for paper. I don’t even see paper as necessary for painting. For the time being, I just focus on integrating traditional and modern elements into something new.

Two years ago, when I went to Macau, I was quarantined in the hotel for 14 days. I couldn’t go out, so I took my time to paint in the room. These are the papers that I brought there to paint, and I made changes after I came back [to Hong Kong]. The crux of art creation lies on making constant efforts and endless attempts. The most important thing is that you try your best and be honest to your work. If you’re satisfied with your painting, [it’s a good painting].

Another thing is that I always think about how to teach my students and what’s the best way to teach them. I’m just doing my part to use my own experience to help them learn, increase knowledge, and contribute to society.

(Original language: Cantonese)

LIN YILIN: When I create art, I always want to do something that no one else has done before or something that's challenging to me. The concept I envisioned [for my early works] wasn't about any city but about Guangzhou specifically.

I have spent so many years there. I've seen the city constantly changing and evolving since I was young. This kind of transformation has gone hand in hand with China's development.

That energy… you just naturally harness that energy [to create art].

One time around Chinese New Year, [I] visited my secondary school teacher with a group of secondary school friends. It was somewhere near Daxin Road. There are some arcade buildings there and the arcades were pretty run-down. Since it was around Chinese New Year, there weren't a lot of people. The migrants had all gone home.

That morning, when I saw the arcades, they felt a bit alien, but at the same time they evoked my nostalgia for my childhood or maybe it was a kind of homesickness. So I thought, ‘what can I do with these arcades?’

Later on, I was at the Havana Biennial in Cuba and I saw people walking on stilts. I thought that I could maybe include them in my work.

I actually don't really live within a Western context. Although I've spent a relatively long time in the West, my mindset doesn’t align with its culture. I live there, but I exist outside of Western society, so there's a sense of displacement.

It's a challenge that artists are faced with in a globalised world. We'll slowly get used to this globalised way of creating, which will likely belong to the artists themselves. The value for the audience will be best understood through experiencing a series of works by an artist instead of just a single work.

I like doing things that I’m not sure I can pull off whether it's because of my body or my ability. I'll always do everything possible to realise my ideas and I'll slowly figure out the right way forward over the course of that process.

This is my particular style of realising [my ideas].

There's a high chance people will find this method clumsy. But it is very likely one of my personal ways to create art.

MICHAEL LIN: ‘What is this? Is this art?’ That was a question I was asked a lot. I guess I was more interested in questioning, how art functions, and so I guess I always gravitated towards art that was somehow functional.

A lot of my works are untitled. It’s kind of an open-ended situation. There is a certain kind of liberty to that.

The audience were invited to sit on the work, to lie on there. Some people took their afternoon naps on it. With each of the pillows, I made paintings also. So, kind of somehow bridging the gap. They didn’t feel that kind of distance with the art.

Most of the fabrics I have been using for the last twenty years in my work has come from very popular prints, I would say from the sixties, seventies, all the way up to the eighties maybe, in Taiwan.

Textiles are something quite intimate. Especially these textile designs. [They] were mostly used as the wedding night bed. They were given by the wife’s family as part of the dowry. I discovered that the audience had a very immediate kind of reaction to the patterns. It was important that it was familiar to the people that saw them, and in general most people have a real kind of nostalgia. So, I started to focus more on that idea of, you know, using this collective memory of the past, as a vehicle to kind of have some sort of dialogue about art and exhibition with the audience.

‘Untitled (Cigarette Break)’ was a kind of attempt to make work that the audience really had to be in contact with. If you sat on the chair and the art retain the trace of your interaction and your physical body with it, you know, smoking, or blowing out smoke is kind of a visualisation of your breath. It’s also a form of relaxation. It’s also a kind of break from a routine. So, I think those are all communicated in what’s there. And then the paintings then become some sort of space.

There are five paintings in this work, and they relate directly to the five cushions that make up a chair. So, it’s this kind of expansion of this macro-micro relationship. For me it was about somehow creating a space rather than an object. The work doesn’t end at the object. It was to make work that was difficult to somehow see the edges of the work so that you were immersed, or you were in the work or part of the work. We’re doing something that’s completely outside of the exhibition experience. And I think that that was a provocation.

(Original language: Mandarin)

HU XIAOYUAN: Everything is in the process of fading away, but due to the brevity of our life there are some things that we don't notice. I'm currently thinking a lot about the issue of authenticity. It's an important aspect of how I perceive and think about this world and existence.

As an artist or as an individual, it's a fundamental part of my existence. In this exhibition, I depicted a pomegranate through my usual method. I found a very plump pomegranate in great shape at the supermarket and then I brought it back to the studio and applied xiao, which I often use in my creations.

Xiao is a pure and natural raw silk woven in a traditional way. I used it to tightly wrap the pomegranate and sew it up so it fit closely to its surface. I'm using xiao and I find the material itself intensely… biological.

It is a type of purely animal-derived material. It is woven with the simplest plain weave method and it's very, very clean, meaning only silk is used. Probably because of the interconnectedness of different organisms I am able to perceive certain qualities in this fabric.

For example, I can feel the breath of life in the material. After wrapping it, and as I often do, I use ink to paint all of the visible details on the pomegranate. We all know that the fruit will dry out and shrink as time passes. As it gets drier and drier, the xiao layer covering the surface also changes over time. That's when it becomes interesting.

We all have the initial assumption that seeing is believing and that what we see is real. In this case, the initial layer I painted was what is believed to be the most authentic state of the pomegranate, but after a few months, it changed to this. So, which one of these two pomegranates is real?

(Original language: Mandarin)

XU ZHEN: The end of the 1990s was not a very active period in the Shanghai art scene. At the time, there were no art spaces; unlike now, when we have exhibitions every day. Everything was kind of underground. After 1997, when young artists, including me, left school we thought, if there are no exhibitions, we can organise some ourselves. Around 2000, after organising a couple of shows, artists from outside Shanghai started coming to the city. Not many, though. The focus of the Shanghai scene has always been on Shanghai artists.

Back then, information on the Internet wasn’t as widespread. Everyone was basically creating in their personal ways. You paid attention to things close to you. For example: desire, the tactile, sex, the flesh. You subconsciously wanted those kinds of things to offer you some stimulation; a new sense of being.

It definitely doesn’t look like a back at first glance. It looks more like an arm or a piece of flesh. When people hear the sounds, they expect certain things to happen. Something to hit the body. But because I have edited out those parts [the slapping actions], the sense of anticipation never gets resolved. I think it’s a rather abstract treatment.

The country or the environment you were in didn’t matter much. If you were a young person entering society your body would naturally be in conflict with your physical surroundings. The older generation was somewhat affected by the Cultural Revolution. Some were against political symbolism, some embraced it. And our younger generation was more concerned with individualism and urbanisation. It’s hard to say if one was greater than the other. What’s certain is that we’ve been expressing our own values in our respective times.