New Energy in Black & White
YY9 Gallery
Shadow and light, negative and positive, black and white. Our very vision relies on such opposites, and artists have always found inspiration in dramatic contrast. Curator Movana Chen has been similarly inspired for her show at YY9 Gallery, which recently relocated to Happy Valley. Entitled 'New Energy in Black & White', it features monochrome works by six Hong Kong artists.
In the centre of the gallery, a low pedestal holds four pieces of white pottery, Rachel Cheung's Linkage. They could almost be book-ends, facing away from and towards one another, except for the coarse black thread connecting them in an uneasy balance.
This sort of static tension is also palpable in the other two ceramic entries by Janet Wong and Siu Kam-han. Wong's Tenon II is a series of white clay semi-circles with a harsh angular stone clamped around each. Siu presents Containment II (right), which examines 'the relationship of a container to its lid'. The pieces recall bowling pins with oversized, bulbous heads, or, as they're posed on black-and-white linoleum, enlarged chess pieces - both readings hint at the strictly formal 'games' in which these ceramic artists are engaged.
The two-dimensional works are 'playful' in a different way. Ling Lai, a graphic designer by trade, brings a slick visual element to Repetition III (the same minimal black lines on three canvases, turned in different directions), while Karen Louie considers surface from the side in Discovering on Paper #18, an assemblage where the cross-section of a paper-stack appears to be a textured panel.