Gravity

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Soluna Fine Art is proud to present a group exhibition, ‘Gravity 重力’, with four artists based in Hong Kong and the Netherlands, including Rosalyn Ng, Tobe Kan, Uzine Park, and Zang Zong-Son. The exhibition will showcase a group of paintings and mixed media drawings of botany, still life, and landscapes that oscillate between abstraction-figuration, portraying liminal space between the mind and the physical world. ‘Gravity 重力’ will be on view from 25 November to 15 December.

“I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?”
Zhuangzi (Chuang-tzu; 莊子)
The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the First Three Chapters of the Chuang-Tzu, 369 BCE to 286 BCE

The butterfly dream parable by Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi has deep roots in Taoist thoughts toward defining reality versus illusion, explaining that our awareness of happy existence and self-contentment can consciously transform the fixed reality. However, nature, the living system, is not free from chaos—when unpredictable plagues and earthquakes emerge catastrophically outside of our control. A butterfly, an organism most robbed of the power to inflict pain on others, cannot be romanticized for its only delightful aspects without considering its ephemeral life cycles of instability.
Precisely is why the concept of gravity may alleviate our perception of reality. Gravity is the fundamental life force that keeps all opposing principles shaping the environment into one seemingly orderly blueprint. The exhibited works are also portraying botany, flowers, trees, and landscapes composed of interdependent colors, lines, and shapes. However, although the viewers may expect to feel like they are looking at pristine and paradisal French impressionist landscapes, they also discover the deformation and erasure of visual properties that relate to the raw truth about nature.

‘Gravity 重力’ is an exhibition about human intuition that guides us to search for an alternate understanding of reality, like the viewers who envision the colors and forms as harmoniously balanced and conflicting at the same time when looking at the works.

The irony between spontaneous yet lyrical aspects of Rosalyn Ng’s (b. 1993 in Hong kong) works are often due to her experiencing yearning for the ideal and freedom during the creative process. However, her visualizations of ‘ideal’ forms on the canvas often contradict herself, resulting in recalibration of her beliefs, fears, and desires.

The mystic-blue botanical paintings by Tobe Kan (b.1984 in Hong Kong) allude to the complicated existence of humanity between the boundaries of life and death. Apart from embodying the human conditions of fragility, plants are also the projection of an otherworldly realm. While Tobe’s primary usage of blue palettes signifies birth and a new beginning, there is also a sense of disconnection and dissonance in the obscured background.

Uzine Park‘s (b. 1977 in South Korea) landscape paintings comprise painterly swooshes of colors highlighting the seasonal atmosphere and conditions of weather. Although vast expanses of the skies and trees appear murky and, at times, even catastrophic, Park’s subtle pictorial representations of the roofed house draws the viewers into the safety of consciousness.
Zang Zong-Son’s (b. 1965 in South Korea) still-life paintings deconstruct the subjects by searching for perspectives where the light shines in both literal and metaphorical manners. She believes that beneath the ambiguous surface of mundane objects and close friends exist hidden notions, more like unique aura, that radiate during ordinary yet beautiful moments in life.

While imagery and representations nested within real space and time bind the viewers to the physical world, the defamiliarizing and estranging aspects free the viewers from identification with material forms. The metaphysical properties of colors and forms connect them with the inner subconscious towards the state of ‘flow’. This describes our most authentic and intuitive state that searches for an alternate reality, and as such, the ideal.

The state of ‘flow’ is similar to the metamorphosis of evolutionary progress, a human development. We experience much of our positive emotions in relation to how we see ourselves progressing towards goals. We continuously search for those ideals while painting and viewing the art, whether they exist in reality or imagination, are attainable or not, or cause suffering in the process. Since otherwise, it is certain we will never feel that our life has meaning.