Roundup from Art Central 2019

With 107 galleries from 22 countries—including 30 new participants hailing from places such as Russia, Israel, Thailand and Colombia—the fifth Art Central was the fair’s most geographically diverse edition to date. Unfolding within two temporary structures located along Hong Kong’s Central harborfront, the event provided a platform for works by established artists alongside emerging talents, as well as performances and six large-scale installations, three of which were specially commissioned for the occasion.

The 2019 Projects sector was overseen by independent curator Ying Kwok, who gathered installations interlinked by their investigations of historical and cultural narratives. For example, Angela Yuen’s City Rhapsody (2018) and Cheuk Wing Nam’s Ak7 Shou3 (2016), presented by Hong Kong’s Contemporary by Angela Li, are works that encapsulate the distinct heritage and cultural tones of the fair’s host city. Yuen’s kinetic assemblage features brightly colored plastic toys and stationery that were manufactured in Hong Kong. The objects rotate around a light, projecting the Hong Kong skyline onto the surrounding white walls, evoking the city’s history as the “Kingdom of Plastic Toys” during the 1960s and ’70s. Cheuk’s work, on the other hand, commented on her personal experiences of growing up in Hong Kong and Mainland China, and her curiosity and subsequent difficulties in figuring out if the person she would speak to would respond in Cantonese or Mandarin. Her participatory installation included sensors that visitors were invited to press. Depending on how much pressure the viewer applied, varying frequencies of sounds interwoven with voices speaking Cantonese and Mandarin would play. Singapore’s contemporary art and design collective Phunk presented a large-scale, text-based painting. The work called attention to the uncertainties of our world today through its newspaper headlines alluding to Brexit, Donald Trump, the refugee crisis, and global warming. Yet, formally evoking peeling street posters, HOPE, ROCK, KISS, LIVE (2019) reminded fair attendees of the impermanence of these issues, and encouraged an optimistic view of the future.