Elpis CHOW: The Other Side

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Gallery EXIT presents ‘The Other Side’, a solo exhibition by Elpis Chow, which will run from 6 November to 4 December, 2021.

This exhibition showcases a new series of oil paintings in different formats made in this year. The works feature the people, street corners, buildings, construction sites, landscapes and objects encountered by the artist in real life, with special attention to the effects of various media and materials on canvas, and how different colours and visual elements are rearranged in the pictorial world. Most of the scenes depicted in the works are nondescript places and corners which evoke a sense of familiarity but also that of strangeness. Hence they are akin to mirror images: While they may be a reflection of reality, they are not reality itself.

Compared to the works in Chow’s previous solo exhibition ‘Blunt’ (2018) which portrayed the surrounding scenery in a more subdued manner, works in this exhibition appear more ‘realistic’. In the paintings, the lines of the buildings are straight and smooth, resembling three-dimensional building models. Adopting the architect’s method, the artist paints real buildings in realistic proportions, inserting at the same time some seemingly ordinary items rendered in different brushstrokes and perspectives, which gives a feeling of things from an alien world being superimposed onto the pictorial world. Coupled with simple grey and bright, colourful shades, the straight and radiating lines recall comic books with frames in different shapes. The resulting surreal two-dimensional world is a mixture of realistic, abstract and comic styles, as well as various materials, textures and elements.

Framed in oval frames and hung on the wall like mirrors are numerous portraits of the acquaintances of the artist and several self-portraits. As Chow paints what she sees in these people, she is also fascinated by what is hidden from view. Seemingly familiar, the figures in the portraits also feel distant, like some abstract symbol, or a mirror image between reality and fantasy.