Double Vision

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Tai Kwun Contemporary is delighted to announce a new group exhibition, Double Vision, curated by Tobias Berger, Jill Angel Chun, and Daniel Szehin Ho, which runs from 21 April to 12 June 2022. With 14 artists from Hong Kong, Asia, and the rest of the world, this group exhibition explores the notion of doubling in its various guises, particularly that of déjà vu.

In circling around the concepts of déjà vu, twinhood, and doubled forms of vision, Double Vision attempts to conjure up a sense of disorientation, of reality being hollowed out. The exhibition playfully foregrounds perception, notably the field of vision and the critical issues related to visuality and visual perception, by providing mirrored scenarios with seemingly superficial and sometimes even contrived distinctions. Double Vision forges and redirects the hallucinatory sensibility of déjà vu towards explorations of the slippery nature of memory and, more generally, the construction of contemporary reality, lived and imagined, in the hopes of getting at alternative modes of possibility.

Double Vision consciously avoids dealing with the relationship of the “original” and the “copy”. Instead, the exhibition forges a sensation, a sensibility, where one might “experience the same situation twice”. Through the curatorial intervention of structural and spatial repetition, the layout is repeated on the 1/F and 3/F of the exhibition space, with works by artists who are (mostly) repeated in the same positions across the two floors. Doubling thus creates déjà vu in the most literal form possible.

Some of the works in Double Vision are formally doubled and extended, with subtle gaps opening up in their differences within sameness: works by Sarah Lai and Magdalen Wong stretches across two floors of the exhibition space, while the new works by Ocean Leung and Li Shuang revel in variations of unifying elements. Likewise, some artists, such as Candice Breitz, Peng Ke, and Tamura Yuichiro, have artworks in series, albeit staged disjointedly over two floors. In contrast, others, such as Omer Fast and Zheng Yuan, present different artworks that revolve around a particular topic. Yet others, such as Ko Sin Tung, Kong Chun Hei, Dane Mitchell, Paul Pfeiffer, and Hito Steyerl, are instead formally and thematically doubled with each other, offering different points of departure and perspectives at similar targets.

Double Vision plays with the imperfections of the repetition. In doing so, the exhibition explores the construction of reality, seeking to detect cracks and fissures, which potentially signal deeper truths or at least potential horizons—while aware of the risk that one could very well be led down a world of distorted mirrors of simulation and conspiracy, where lies feel “truth-y”, and the “real” feels too painful to bear. In defining a distinctive spatial and temporal experience, Double Vision seeks to prompt creative reflection on sensorial awareness and the contemporary production of reality—with possible insights on the relation of structures and accidents, nature and nurture, the said and unsaid.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

Artists on show include:
Candice Breitz (b. 1972 in Johannesburg, South Africa; lives in Berlin) Omer Fast (b. 1972 in Jerusalem; lives in Berlin)
Ko Sin Tung (b. 1987 in Hong Kong; lives in Hong Kong)
Kong Chun Hei (b. 1987 in Hong Kong; lives in Hong Kong)
Sarah Lai (b. 1983 in Hong Kong; lives in Hong Kong)
Ocean Leung (b. 1983 in Hong Kong; lives in Hong Kong)
Li Shuang (b. 1990 in Wuyi Mountains; lives in Berlin and Geneva) Dane Mitchell (b. 1976 in Auckland, New Zealand; lives in Auckland) Peng Ke (b. 1992 in Changsha; lives in Shanghai)
Paul Pfeiffer (b. 1966 in Honolulu, USA; lives in New York)
Hito Steyerl (b. 1966 in Munich, Germany; lives in Berlin)
Magdalen Wong (b. 1981 in Hong Kong; lives in New York and Lisbon) Tamura Yuichiro (b.1977 in Toyama, Japan; lives in Kyoto)
Zheng Yuan (b.1988 in Lanzhou; lives in Beijing)