Hanart TZ Gallery is proud to present AU Hoi Lam’s new solo exhibition Painting, Its Reasons to Be. The opening reception will take place at Hanart TZ Gallery on October 19, 2024 (Saturday), from 2 to 6 pm, in the presence of the artist.

The French contemporary philosopher Michel Foucault posed the question, “Why should a painter work if he is not transformed by his own painting?” For Foucault, the transformation of the self through one’s own knowledge is a process that approaches the aesthetic experience. Through the artist’s painting process, a painting yet to be completed gradually transforms.  Equally, the artist’s temperament, thoughts, and endurance are shaped and transformed through the painting.

No matter why he or she paints, an artist’s conviction throughout the long creative process that “it must be this way” informs the choices this unique individual makes over and over again in the name of value and of meaning. What is produced by these choices is not a random cause or effect, nor is it a universal truth or knowledge.

AU Hoi Lam views the creation of art as a method of “Care of the Self”. She equally uses the language of painting and self-writing as vehicles to change and ultimately to transform herself. Her contemplations on life and her commitment to craftsmanship are all integrated into her art. From the brewing of an idea, to stretching the canvas, mixing the paints, and making and installing the work, for AU the entire creative process is a means of exercise and ascesis of the self. It is a process of retrospection, contemplation, remembrance, oblivion; of otium, vigilance, prayer, relaxation; of soothing and cultivation.

“A painter is like a unique radio endowed with the sensibility and the will  to receive, translate, and interpret the pulse, secret codes, and breath flowing between the cosmos and the human world, and then to transmit the resulting sounds through a singular loudspeaker. Because each loudspeaker has its own unique conditions and limitations, it is able to transmit just exactly those sounds.” AU Hoi Lam believes that the images she can only vaguely perceive and sense in her mind must be painted on canvas before she can truly see them.

AU Hoi Lam’s paintings combine a complex interweaving of techniques: minimalist geometric abstraction, straightforward writing-brushwork, cryptic text-symbol-image, and contemplative, intensive repetition. Through this interweaving she shapes metaphysical landscapes that are at once microscopic and macroscopic, infinitesimal and cosmic, bringing into being an introspective and meticulously articulated cartography of the spirit.

The starting point for AU Hoi Lam’s creative process is like an encrypted private language that is difficult to decode: but within the autobiographical nature of her works is concealed a distinctive element of healing. Through a constant refinement of craftsmanship, the artist’s private emotions and thoughts are transposed into open and intuitive abstract landscapes. As viewers look at the paintings and wander among them, they can instinctively grasp and appreciate the beauty of the abstract realm.

It has been eight years since AU Ho Lam’s last solo show. Painting: Its Reasons to Be presents a range of more than 30 works selected from different periods, illuminating distinctive aspects of AU’s creative work over the past twenty years. Here, it is the paintings themselves that dialectically demonstrate the “reasons for painting”. Most of these works are being displayed in public for the first time, including the artist’s latest series Contemplating in a Hermetic House (2021-2024) and Prime Number or Imperfect Square (2024).

Contemplating in a Hermetic House comprises 10 works in pencil and acrylic on linen, including Portal, Transparent, Opaque, Puzzle Hong Kong Island and Cosmic Memento. Within this series there are three pairs of works in which one work appears to be an intricate magnification or inverse of the other, exploring the idea of intertextuality in painting. In the Prime Number or Imperfect Square series, seven prime numbers (1801, 1889, 1949, 1951, 1973, 1997, 1999) are separately represented as precisely calculated frames within a grid diagram. Within each frame is introduced a set of nearly perfect but imperfect squares, creating perceptible forms of numbers and geometry.

The exhibition continues through 30 November 2024.

(Translation by Valerie C. Doran)