Artist Tsang Kin-wah hasn't held a solo show in Hong Kong since 2005, the year he won the Sovereign Asian Art Prize for one of the works he is still most closely identified with: repetitive swirling floral patterns composed of intricate, tiny texts - often profanities, religious quotes and philosophical references - which envelop entire gallery interiors like psychedelic wallpaper.
This week, the 36-year-old returns with a new exhibition at Pearl Lam Galleries titled 'Ecce Homo Trilogy I', a site-specific installation project with curator David Chan Ho-yeung, former director of Osage Gallery and Shanghai Gallery of Art.
Latin for 'Behold the Man', it is both a reference to Jesus' crucifixion and the key work by Friedrich Nietzsche. And the show will contain elements both old and new to Tsang's practice.
In his usual self-qualifying mode, Tsang explains: 'For me, this exhibition is not very important but still quite important, because it's something that looks very different from my previous work, and has some new things that I want to focus on more in the coming years.'
'Ecce Homo Trilogy I' is built around archival video footage of the show trial, execution and burial of Romanian communist leader and dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989. Swooping textual patterns along the walls set some of the themes and lead viewers into the gallery space along a corridor, towards a reflective aluminum painting, which turns into a series of chambers where the triptych of execution video works are shown.
The gallery windows are made to look like those in Ceausescu's prison cell and the last glances he might have taken towards the sky before his execution, according to Tsang.