Leung Chi Wo
Press the Button…
April 25—June 30, 2015
OCAT Shenzhen
Exhibition Hall A
OCT Loft
Enping Road
Nanshan
Shenzhen
Curator: Carol Yinghua Lu
Organizer: OCAT Shenzhen
Support: Shenzhen Overseas Chinese Town Corporation Ltd.
We proudly present Press the Button…, a mid-career survey show of Leung Chi Wo. It is the first survey exhibition of this Hong Kong artist in Mainland China. Despite the geographical proximity and frequent economic exchanges between Shenzhen and Hong Kong, there exists a considerable gap between the art communities on both sides of the border.
Leung, a veteran of the Hong Kong art scene, will receive an in-depth consideration of his three-decade-long practice in this exhibition that presents 30 works drawn from the period from 1993 to present days. It is most relevant that the latest work he presents in this exhibition is based on his childhood experience of crossing the border weekly for his medical treatment in a hospital in Shenzhen.
As a Hong Kong native, Leung’s works, in the form of photography, performance, text, video and installations, often portrays and explores his hometown city in terms of its urban space, its languages, its memory and its colonial history, its bureaucratic structure and the ideology imbedded in it, its art world and its art history. But he also goes beyond the history of Hong Kong and questions and investigates into forms and content of historic consciousness, memories, and narratives that are constructions in essence.
The works in the exhibition will be arranged non-chronologically or strictly by their subject matters. Rather, the audience would be invited to navigate a rhizome-like floor plan that reflects the reoccurring and interwoven concerns central to the artist’s practice: “City and its myth,” “Subjective memory,” “Text and language of uncertainty,” “My small art world,” and “Perceptive space,” with subtle indications of connectivity among the works.
Born in 1968 in Hong Kong, Leung Chi Wo obtained a Post-Diploma in Culture of Photography from l’Istituto per lo Sviluppo Socio-Economico dello Spilimberghese in Italy and an MFA from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In 1996, he co-founded the art space Para/Site. Leung has participated in artist-in-residence programs in the US, Japan, Australia, etc. He has also participated in international biennales and triennials in Venice, Shanghai, Gwangju, Busan, Guangzhou, and Manchester. His solo exhibitions have been held in Hong Kong, Vienna, London, Toronto, Sapporo, and New York. Leung currently holds the position of Assistant Professor at the Creative Media Department in the City University of Hong Kong.
About the curator:
Carol Yinghua Lu lives and works in Beijing. She is the contributing editor for Frieze and is on the advisory board for The Exhibitionist. Lu was on the jury for the Golden Lion Award in 2011 Venice Biennale and the co-artistic director of 2012 Gwangju Biennale and co-curator of the 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale in 2012. Lu was the first visiting fellow of Asia-Pacific at Tate Research Centre in 2013. She has co-authored several publications with Liu Ding, which include: Little Movements: Self-practice in Contemporary Art (Guangxi Normal University Press, 2011), Little Movements II: Self-practice in Contemporary Art (Walther König, 2013), Accidental Message: Art is not a System, not a World (Lingnan Art Publishing House, 2012), and Individual Experience: Conversations and Narratives of Contemporary Art Practice in China from 1989 to 2000 (Lingnan Art Publishing House, 2013). This would be Lu’s last curated exhibition at OCAT Shenzhen, where she acts as the artistic director from July 2012 to June 2015.
About OCAT Shenzhen
OCAT was founded in 2005, and established a nationwide contemporary art museum group in April 2012. OCAT Museums has venues across the country, including OCAT Shenzhen, OCT Art & Design Gallery, OCAT Shanghai, OCAT Xi’an and OCAT Institute (Beijing). As the group’s headquarters, OCAT Shenzhen has long been committed to researching the theory and practice of Chinese and international contemporary art.
