The Journey of an Exhibition: Behind Curating Never End
By Joyce Hei-ting Wong
The idea for Never End: The Art and Life of Gaylord Chan began with a photograph. A few years ago, while I was researching for another project, I came across a picture taken at the opening of a group exhibition in the late 1980s. In the lively picture are four Hong Kong artists—Luis Chan, Irene Chou, Hon Chi-fun, and Gaylord Chan. While the first three have enjoyed thorough retrospectives in the last few years, Gaylord was still relatively under-studied. I was intrigued by his work and also the friendships that he shared with other local artists. This curiosity set me off to find out more about his work and life, and the dynamic career that he led quickly inspired the concept of this exhibition.
I reached out to the artist estate with my idea, and Josephine Chow, the late artist’s wife and close collaborator, generously blessed the project with enthusiasm. From the beginning, I also had ASHK’s gallery in mind for the project because it was spacious yet intimate, a perfect size that could encourage focus and attention to detail—both quite necessary to view and appreciate Gaylord’s unusual and cryptic paintings. Luckily, ASHK found the project meaningful as well and embraced it with open arms.
Curating a retrospective is very much like a treasure hunt or solving a puzzle—in tracking down artworks, sorting through old photos, letters, and newspapers, and putting together all the information into a complete story of an artist’s career. As Gaylord lived a long and vibrant creative life, there were a lot of pieces to the puzzle. Together with the help of Josephine, I began from sifting through the artist’s storage. We found paintings, teaching tools, and countless other ephemera. One of the most interesting discoveries are Gaylord’s cassettes and VHS tapes, which to my surprise are all neatly labelled and organized thanks to Gaylord’s tidiness and forethought! The trouble with these materials, however, is that most of them were recorded in the 1980s and 1990s and too fragile to play. The only way to view and preserve them was to digitize them into contemporary media files. With no way of knowing what the exact contents of each tape were, it was a bit of a gamble to make a “blind” selection for digitization based on tape labels. Fortunately, most of the tapes were still in relatively good condition, and they opened up an important window into Gaylord’s life—his teachings, travels, and exhibition history, as well as his friends, his jokes, and outlook on life. These invaluable primary resources are the foundation of the research behind Never End.
As a curator, I’m often asked what I hope for the audience to take away from an exhibition. The answer varies from project to project, and retrospectives are unique in that they are as much about art as they are about the multifaceted life of an artist. In the two years of preparing this exhibition, I was most inspired by Gaylord’s honesty in sharing his practice with students and peers, as well as his tenacity in never giving up on living life to the fullest despite his struggles with health. It is these qualities that I hope the audience may discover in his fascinating symbols and vibrant palette on both canvas and screen. As with any good story that gets retold across time, Gaylord’s is one that doesn’t end with one telling. Hopefully, more will be inspired by this exhibition to join the journey on spreading his uplifting tale.
* Never End: The Art and Life of Gaylord Chan is currently exhibited at the Chantal Miller Gallery at Asia Society Hong Kong Center.
Joyce Hei-ting Wong is an independent researcher and curator of East Asian modern and contemporary art. She has most recently guest curated the retrospective Never End: The Art and Life of Gaylord Chan at Asia Society Hong Kong Center. A former curator at Asia Society Hong Kong Center, Joyce has organized exhibitions like A World Within: The Art and Inspiration of Irene Chou (2019); A Story of Light: Hon Chi-fun (2019); Song of Spring: Pan Yu-Lin in Paris (2018); and Painting Her Way: The Ink Art of Fang Zhaoling (2017), etc. She holds a BA in Art History and English Literature from the University of Hong Kong (2015) and an MA in Contemporary Literature, Culture, and Theory from King’s College London (2021).