For Debbie Han, creating art requires time and a good deal of patience. To arrive at her latest work, the artist spent three years making 130 porcelain head sculptures, and threw away all but 10. Then she photographed the face of each sculpture and overlayed three or four frames in a single image to produce The Eye of Perception series, now on show at Cat Street Gallery's new space on Hollywood Road. These fuzzy, layered photos reveal in their complexity not only her struggle with the material, but, ironically, a clarity of vision.
'During that long process of trial, failure and endurance, I wondered if I could express the concept of clarity,' says Korean-born Han, 41, who moved to Los Angeles with her family when she was 10.
The eight photographs in the Eye of Perception series are of blurry, out-of-focus faces. Some have grossly exaggerated hooked snouts on top of button noses, while others feature wide, fat lips over thin ones. The multifaceted nature of each image invites viewers to make their own interpretation of who they are seeing.
Central to her work is how people interpret social values and perceive beauty; through it, she addresses questions of identity and contemporary culture. 'I'm an artist who is conceptually based and I believe in art that communicates with the public,' she says.
The exhibition, her debut in Hong Kong, features 29 photographic and sculptural works made over the past seven years. It's a large body of work that showcases Han's versatility and skill with different materials, including bronze, ceramic celadon and lacquer inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The exhibition was shown at Munich's mbf-kunstprojekte gallery and Seoul's Trunk Gallery this year.
The centrepiece is the Seated Three Graces, a digital LightJet print that won the 2009 Sovereign Asian Art Prize. The image, part of the Graces series, shows three seated nude women with luminous skin and Caucasian faces. At first glance, they appear to be marble statues that have been photographed. But in fact they are real-life nudes.