Dual Solo Exhibition by
Giraffe Leung and Simon Wan
29 August - 29 September 2019
La Galerie Paris 1839 is delighted to present a dual solo exhibition by two emerging artists from Hong Kong: Giraffe Leung (b. Hong Kong, 1993) and Simon Wan (b. Hong Kong, 1975). The exhibition will take place from 29th August to 29th September 2019, with the Opening night at 6.30 – 9pm on 29th August 2019, at La Galerie Paris 1839, G/F, 74 Hollywood Road, Central.
*Artist Giraffe Leung will demonstrate his approach at the opening night in an approximately 45 minutes demonstration whilst showing his method, materials used and taking questions from the audience.
For this exhibition, Giraffe Leung presents his new series of painting, entitled Coins – Memories of Hong Kong features Hong Kong 20 cents, 10 cents and 1 dollar coins. By experiment different methods of blackening the coins with solutions to portray images of iconic Hong Kong scenes, both existing and vanished, such as the Victoria Harbour, Queen’s Pier (named after Queen Victoria, was established in 1925 and closed down to facilitate land reclamation in 2007), and Anita Mui, is the queen of Hong Kong’s pop music industry and an actress, who died of cervical cancer in 2003. Leung speaks not only to his memories of his home city, but also to the inevitable changes in Hong Kong.
Leung uses tens of thousands of coins seemingly as a canvas in his works, which become an inseparable part of the visual content. “While digital, virtual and other types of transaction are globally replacing the physical currencies, I want to use coins to remind people of the value of things that existed and played a role in our lives,” Leung says. His works responds to the immediacy of social change in Hong Kong and identity.
In Simon Wan’s City Glow images, he was shooting the night time cityscapes among the most populous cities on the Asian continent, tracing the contours of night time cityscapes in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei, Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore. With the use of multiple exposures Wan overlies images of international brands, advertisements and facades of buildings, in which he has woven the dark of the night and the brightness of advertising lights into the structure of his work in a methodical manner.
The complex architectural landscape images are developed and printed in the darkroom using traditional techniques, where Wan depicts the distinctive quality of each city at night with a dreamy and poetic touch. These powerful images produce similar vibes, yet preserve a subtle sense of individual urban characteristic. The global features such as advertising, branding, chain stores and logos reveal our everyday lives in a globalized world, sharing common effects of the process on culture, on economic development and prosperity between cities.
