Luke Ching Chin-wai: Two in One

Luke Ching Chin-wai: Two in One

Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre

Reviewed: June 16

A century ago Marcel Duchamp jolted viewers' expectations of reality by presenting an everyday object as art. The surrealists pursued a similar course: Man Ray's photograph of a woman's naked back was transformed into a human cello by adhering pieces of black paper to mimic two f-shaped resonance holes.

Luke Ching's tightly presented Two in One exhibition is in similar surrealist territory. The artist's droll, absurdist humour plays with a variety of everyday objects to visually represent a skewed version of the much-hackneyed term 'one country, two systems'.

In Bauhinia Blakeana & Bauhinia Variegata Ching presents photographs of two varieties of Hong Kong's familiar flower - and then performs a private ceremony, collecting the flowers of one variety and placing them under the other. A small, subtle intervention, but as worthy an endeavour as some of the celebratory events planned for the 10th anniversary of the handover.