Falling into Place: The Artistic Journey of Isaac Chong Wai

Artist Talk with Isaac Chong Wai, moderated by Nick Yu, Development Manager at Blindspot Gallery

Friday, August 7th, 2020

Artist Talk 12:00/18:00 (EET/HKT); Close 12:45/18:45 (EET/HKT) 

Free admission; online registration required.

This program will be conducted in English.

In this Artist Talk, artist Isaac Chong Wai will detail some the concepts and his research behind his work featured in ASHK current exhibition Next Act: Contemporary Art from Hong Kong. Besides the viewpoint on the future art scene in Hong Kong, Isaac will also share his experience in Berlin as an artist, and the differences between Hong Kong. The conversation will be moderated by curator Nick Yu.

About the Artwork

Isaac Chong Wai presents a body of work including sculpture, video, drawings and ready-made objects. In Falling Carefully, the action of falling is frozen volatility, duplicating the artist’s body into different positions during a fall. Each position supports other positions within a structure that allows the sculptures to stay intact. Chong attempts to radically transform the feeling of powerlessness during a fall – a condition most of us believe we cannot escape the inevitability and impossibility – into an imaginary, collective and supportive foundation.   

The philosopher John Locke once discussed the falling man above a crumbled bridge – the action of falling is involuntary. The man does not voluntarily fall, nor could the man avoid falling. The unintentional action of falling is no longer a self-autonomous movement dominated by our body and will. Resisting the automatism, Chong interrupts how we perceive the failure of standing. By questioning the unavoidable outcomes of falling, the work subverts the expected collapse attentively and considerably as the failure of falling. 

Isaac Chong Wai (b. 1990, Guangdong province, China) is a multimedia artist based in Berlin and Hong Kong. He graduated from the Academy of Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University with a BA in Visual Arts in 2012, and the Bauhaus-Universität in Weimar, Germany, with a MFA in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies in 2016. Chong works with a diverse range of media, including performance, site-specific installation, public art, video, photography and multimedia. Influenced by personal events and global phenomena, he engages themes of collectivism and individualism, politics of time and space, border, migration, war, identity politics, LGBTQ, public sphere and human rights. His recent solo exhibition includes Chapter A: The Rehearsal of the Futures, Apartment der Kunst, Munich, Germany, 2018, Chapter B: An Artistic Archive of Borders, Kunstraum München, Munich, Germany, 2018, and What is the future in the past? And what is the past in the future?,Bauhaus Museum, Weimar, Germany, 2016. In 2018, Chong was commissioned by M+ to produce the performance work Rehearsal of the Futures: Police Training Exercises.

Nick Yu manages and plans exhibitions at Blindspot Gallery, as well as other special projects. He previously held the position of research and curatorial fellow at Slought Foundation, Philadelphia. In addition, he is also an art writer and a curator. He contributes regularly to Art Asia Pacific and has recently curated exhibitions such as “Bad Bodies” (Eaton, Hong Kong, 2019), “Holy Mosses” (Blindspot Gallery, 2019), and “Play and Loop II” (Blindspot Gallery, 2020).

Got questions? Go to http://www.slido.com and enter code #46390. 

Registration at https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_dlTJbdQWSZu68XIc-746AA