Gallery EXIT – Hilarie HON – The daily disappearance of the sun

(Please scroll down for the Chinese version)

Hilarie HON: The daily disappearance of the sun

6 January – 10 February 2018

Opening: Saturday, 6 January 2018, 4 – 7 pm

Gallery EXIT, 3/F, 25 Hing Wo Street, Tin Wan, Aberdeen, Hong Kong

Hours: Tue – Sat, 11 am – 6 pm

The works in the exhibition represent both a continuation and a departure for the artist. They feature familiar elements of HON’s highly personal style such as her palette of strong and often complementary colours or her use of irony. At the same time, however, they mark a step towards a more conceptual approach to art-making.

HON’s latest work is motivated by her interest in other disciplines such as literature and cinema. Many of the paintings were inspired by a novel by Italian writer Luigi Pirandello. First published in 1904, “The Late Mattia Pascal” is an ironic reflection on freedom and identity. Pirandello tells the story of a man who attempts to escape his dreary life by assuming a new identity, only to discover that the freedom he hoped for remains elusive.

Not life itself is to blame for our unhappiness, the novel teaches us. Rather, it is our attitude towards life that leads to disappointment. We constantly project our expectations onto nature, hoping it will provide us with meaning and answers. But nature, as Pirandello writes at one point, “has not the remotest consciousness even that we exist.

Rather than referencing the book directly, the artist uses it as a starting point for her own reflections on freedom. A recurring motif in her paintings is the setting sun, a scene often associated with romantic feelings or the longing for freedom. To HON, these emotions are only projected. Accordingly, her sunsets are anything but romantic. The landscape is immersed in an unreal glow, the sun itself has a smiling face that seems to make fun of our expectations.

Her series “Daily Does the Sun Disappear” repeats the sunset motif over and over again but changes it from one painting to another, similar to the frames of a film reel. The canvases of different formats are arranged by descending size. Towards the end of the sequence, the paintings not only become smaller but also more crowded with near-abstract silhouettes of flying birds. As their numbers grow and the boundaries of the canvas are closing in, their freedom appears increasingly restricted.

Several other paintings show scenes related to cinema. In one we encounter a lone moviegoer sitting among empty seats in a dark theatre. Another presents a view from the auditorium towards the projection screen on which we see, of course, a setting sun. In the artist’s view, both painting and cinema construct an alternative reality and perhaps even promise freedom, albeit a freedom limited to the confines of the screen or the canvas. In her paintings of cinemas showing sunset scenes, HON buries this freedom under different layers of reality, revealing it as distant and illusory.

As if to prove this point, the exhibition also includes an installation consisting of two cinema seats. They seem to offer an escape into a different life – only to disappoint with a view of nothing more than the gallery window.

韓幸霖《每日太陽恆常消失》

2018年1月6日至2月10日

開幕：1月6日(星期六)下午4時至7時

地點：安全口畫廊 香港香港仔田灣興和街25號大生工業大廈3樓

辦公時間：星期二至六 上午11時至下午6時

一系列全新作品，標誌著其藝術實踐的延續與啟程。畫作富呈韓氏的個人風格——她繼續沿用鮮艷的色彩和互補色，產生強烈而燦爛的視覺效果，透現一種陰沉諷刺的荒謬。但同時間，今次的創作取向更趨概念性。

近作每每啟發自藝術家對文學與電影的熱忱。意大利作家Luigi Pirandello的1904年小說《The Late Mattia Pascal》是大部分畫作的靈感來源，書中微妙而諷刺地反思人的自由和身分，故事述說一個男人在機緣巧合下開展第二次人生，藉此逃離悲慘枯燥的生命，但他最終發現，所謂的自由其實只是徒然。

在小說中，人生的不如意和失落並非宿命，而是源自看待生命的態度。人將期望投射於大自然，希望從中尋找意義和答案。但正如Pirandello所撰，大自然對人的存在根本毫不在意。

藝術家以此為間接的出發點，反思自由。畫中經常出現的日落，經常被人投射浪漫或自由的嚮往，但她認為這只是一廂情願。在她畫筆下的日落，浸沒在一股奇異的光芒之中，夕陽臉帶微笑，彷彿在譏笑觀者的期望。

《每日太陽恆常消失》由大至小排列，夕陽在畫上重複又重複地出現，並逐漸被飛鳥覆蓋，恍如連續播放的電影片段。畫越來越小，抽象的群鳥形象便越擠越滿，數量漸多的鳥與越縮越小的畫布形成反比，鳥的自由也彷彿漸受限制。

其他畫作則以電影院為題材：一位孤獨的看戲人坐在漆黑的電影院裏，其他座位空空如也，另一幅從觀眾席的角度望向銀幕，上面同樣播放著日落的情景。在藝術家眼中，繪畫和電影都在建構另一種真實，甚至是自由，但這是限制於四條框邊的自由。在日落電影院系列中，韓氏將這種自由埋藏在一層又一層的真實之中，是拒人千里的，也是虛假的。

展覽設置了兩張電影椅，似乎要再次證明這一點。我們都想坐在電影椅上，逃往另一個世界，但椅子只朝向畫廊的窗口，我們又再失望而回。
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