Her brother died when she was 10. His mother died during his 20s. Two young Hong Kong artists channel trauma of loved ones’ deaths in show
- Hong Kong artists Kwong Wing-kwan and Tang Kwong-san are showing in two separate solo exhibitions at Gallery Exit until June 19
- With the gallery’s founder in hospital following a ruptured aneurysm, there is certain poignancy to showing artists preoccupied with fate’s abrupt turns
Gallery Exit, an art gallery in Hong Kong, is hosting solo exhibitions by a pair of local artists who have both channelled the trauma from the death of loved ones into their multifaceted artistic practices.
Kwong Wing-kwan’s older brother had a heart attack at 18 when he was out jogging one day, killing him instantly. She was 10 then, and the shock of that sudden calamity continues to reverberate more than two decades later.
“Clear-air Turbulence”, the title of her first solo exhibition in 2013, was named after an aviation term for strong air currents in a seemingly calm, cloudless sky that are as unpredictable as the death of her brother was. Most of her earlier series are dominated by darker hues and a direct signalling of impending doom.
Not so with “Good Morning, Sweet Dreams”. The new series she began in 2018 consists mostly of light-filled, highly realistic oil paintings of the sky seen through windows, from glorious, towering cumulonimbi lit by the setting sun to small studies of lone clouds tinted with the orange and pink of dusk. One particularly striking image shows a sky ablaze with orange above the sea as black storm clouds descend like nightfall. The canvas is covered by a thin black veil, giving the impression that the scene is being viewed by someone from behind a sheer curtain.
