May 25 2020

A Global Spectrum of Styles at Asia Society’s Sculpture Show

by Ashlyn Chak and Charmaine Kong

RASHEED ARAEEN’s Hong Kong Blues (2018), a cobalt-blue geometric complex made of stainless steel, was commissioned for the city’s Harbour Arts Sculpture Park in 2018. Araeen’s lattice-cube structures are representative of the artist’s abstract geometric style, which reflects both his formal training in civil engineering and his response to American Minimalism. All photos by Ashlyn Chak and Charmaine Kong for ArtAsiaPacific.

Hosted by the Asia Society Hong Kong Center (ASHK) and co-organized with the Hong Kong Art Gallery Association (HKAGA), the six-month-long Sculpture Exhibition comprises 21 works scattered throughout the leafy, oasis-like premises. Devised in the wake of mass event cancellations due to Covid-19, the exhibition showcases for-sale sculptures offered by 18 galleries. Here’s a peek at some of the sculptures on view across ASHK’s indoor and open-air areas.

An allegory of migration, Nostalgia (2013) is a cast of Cuban sculptor YOAN CAPOTE’s suitcase used during a trip to New York, the interior space of which is packed with bricks sourced from Manhattan. The wall alludes to the weight of the past and the impossibility of return, evoking the bittersweet experience of immigrants.

In the installation 12 Acute Unequal Angles (2016), French conceptual artist BERNAR VENET assembles 12 cor-ten steel structures of differing heights and angular degrees.

Beijing-based sculptor WANG KEPING’s Woman Leaning (2005) portrays the flowing curves of a female figure, rendered in an abstract style inspired by both Chinese Han-dynasty ceramic figures and traditional African sculpture.

Iranian-American artist and architect SIAH ARMAJANI’s Street Corner No. 2 (1995) presents an elegant balance of two bronze, arched, bridge forms spanning nearly three meters across.

Currently the dean of the Guangzhou Sculpture Institute, XU HONGFEI depicts the humorous narrative of an athletic man and a chubby woman in Take Me to Fly (2014). The bronze sculpture is a lively image of contradicting forms where the running man guides the flying woman by the arm.

South Korean pottery artist LEE KANG-HYO demonstrates his technique of applying liquefied clay on ceramic surfaces in Buncheong Big Jar – The Sky 31 (2018). The resulting pattern depicts the changing of the seasons and creates a mesmerizing sense of “zen” and tranquility in its resemblance to ink brush painting.

The Hong Kong and Japan-based artist NG KA-HO adopted an openwork technique to create a perforated surface for Time capsule 14h (2018). By piercing this black clay piece with holes, Ng explores the possibilities of negative space and the ways that the vessel interacts with light and shadow.

Experimental artist LI HONGBO’s paper sculpture The Child with Scarf (2016-18) can seem like just another white plaster bust when compact. Upon being stretched out, it reveals a flexible honeycombed structure that enables the sculpture to change shape. Li’s refined technique of cutting and gluing pieces of paper together borrows from traditional Chinese folk art.

PETER SHIRE’s Venus Ascending (2013), an abstract sculpture resembling a peach tree, is a playful riff on modernist design.