Cultural clashes at Galerie Perrotin make lasting mark
Bright beaded canvases of street fighters, the tangled sheets of a bed at the Four Seasons, and the swirl and cacophony of Hong Kong's streets.
These are the scenes imagined by two artists who have made travel and cultural clashes their defining subjects, and are displaying their work at the Galerie Perrotin in Central from today. At first glance, by Iranian-born Farhad Moshiri and by Korean-born Jin Meyerson might not have much in common.
But for both Moshiri and Meyerson, their lives and work have been irreversibly shaped by spending extended time in places not of their birth.
"There are cultural idiosyncrasies that come into your head and they never leave," said Moshiri of his 12 years living in Los Angeles. His time in the American movie hub left him with a sense of humour and irony that was rarely seen when he moved back home in the late 1980s.
"Comedy was non-existent in the arts in Iran … The artists that had humour in their works were criticised for being shallow - for being a clown," he said.
Since moving back to Tehran, his work has kept a tongue-in-cheek tone, which can be felt in his beaded works for .
For Meyerson, who was adopted by Jewish and Swedish-American parents and who grew up in Minnesota, fitting in was always a struggle. As the only Asian in his school, he couldn't help but stand out.
In Hong Kong, "they all look like me, the anonymity is great", he says. He enjoys blending into the background.
Meyerson moved to Hong Kong a year ago from South Korea. is his attempt to come to terms with this hectic city and his place in it.
He writes: "What I really needed was to create some calm, a bit of sanctuary in a city full of noise.
"A personal space, of beds and moments of rest. But as we all know, no silence is absolute, and there really is ."
