DESIRE
– an international group show with tantalizing, disheartening yet sobering art works.
Instant gratification takes too long!
, one of the participating artists commented, “Sexuality is also an illusion, creating the conditions of desire, which may not be connected with the ‘reality’ of the sexual act.”
Art makes us conscious of the in-betweens of the various states of aggregation. takes on these oscillations between fantasies and realities and features works that tease and play with our desires while deconstructing and examining our feelings and relationship with them.
Even though the artists in this exhibition would appear to be engaging with the audience primarily on a sexual level, with a closer look we would then realize that these works also address other issues such as representation, gender and consumerism.
Hong Kong, a city of visual stimulations, is an ideal setting for an exhibition calledas it is totally absorbed with it. With a skyline of skyscrapers flashing year round like Christmas lights, property ads displaying models more attractive than the buildings advertised, and shopping windows full of luxury goods; Hong Kong’s surface is a cornucopia filled with material temptations. Its underground has plenty to offer for whatever tickles your fancies from sex to illegal drugs, and music, dance and sex clubs for every taste.
The city is full of promises; big ones, small ones, empty ones – some possible to please and many ending in disappointments. Yet all these implied gratifications lure you more, make you crave for instant satisfaction, which takes usually too long to fulfill and is over faster than expected.
The artists in this exhibition present us the individual notions of desire through their works. respective videos and slides are curious short vignettes about sex and human relations. The women in photography share the same aura of mystique but have a hint of sadness lurking underneath, whereas nude self-portraits create the fantasized inter-play between the viewer and the viewed. To further explore desire on another plane, shifts the focus and approaches the subject in relation to consumerism and status.