Continuing the exploration at the 56th Venice Biennale Solo exhibition Nothing by Hong Kong artist Tsang Kin-Wah inaugurates M+ Pavilion

M+, the new museum of visual culture in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, is delighted to present Tsang Kin-Wah: Nothing, the inaugural exhibition at the M+ Pavilion, the first permanent structure in the District and the temporary home for M+ exhibitions in the run up to the opening of the M+ building in late 2019. The exhibition is co-presented by M+ and the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. As a return exhibition and continuation of Tsang Kin-Wah: The Infinite Nothing, the artist’s 2015 solo exhibition representing Hong Kong at the 56th Venice Biennale, the newly commissioned work, Nothing is a site-specific installation which will provide viewers with an immersive experience that addresses the essence of life and our inability to escape fate. The exhibition is co-curated by Doryun Chong, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, and Stella Fong, Lead Curator, Learning and Interpretation; with Sharon Chan and Winnie Lai, Assistant Curators of M+.

A re-examination of human existence and an echo to the artist’s previous work, Nothing combines metaphors and allegories drawn from philosophies, literature and religious concepts, with elements of film, music and other popular culture references—ranging from the Christian Tree of Life to the Buddhist Bodhi Tree; from Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange to the music of Kurt Cobain, the lead singer and guitarist of Nirvana; and from Shakespeare’s Macbeth to Béla Tarr’s The Turin Horse. Nothing invites viewers into the emotional ebbs and flows of the artist’s inner world and compels them to reconsider life’s absurdity and nothingness.

The tree at the starting point of the exhibition serves a symbolic purpose, posing to viewers a philosophical question: all lives are rooted in dust and shall return to dust, so what significance does life possess? To Tsang, the whole life is an interminable illusion, in which a myriad of things and matters recycle and reincarnate. Thus the meaning of life lies perhaps in the endless journey of epiphany, overthrow and emancipation of the self.

Tsang Kin-Wah states, “Using the word ‘nothing’ to convey the concept of nothingness is an act that is inherently contradictory. That is why I have chosen to add a ‘strikethrough’ to the word in the exhibition title as a way of self-eradication, and to present the state of being in the exhibition.”

Doryun Chong, Deputy Director and Chief Curator of M+, said, “Tsang was undaunted by the brand-new M+ Pavilion structure and brought his typical ingenuity and daring to extend and completely transform the space. The result is an exceptional space-time, which not only provides the visitor an all-enveloping perceptual experience, but also triggers an emotional, intellectual, and even moral self-examination in the viewer.”

GENERAL INFORMATION

Exhibition Period:

From 9 September until 6 November 2016
11 am – 6 pm

Wednesday to Sunday and public holidays

Location
M+ Pavilion, WKCD

Talks

As part of the exhibition Tsang Kin-Wah: Nothing, M+ presents a series of free programmes including talk, guided tours, and events for teachers with the hope to provide deeper understanding of the exhibition and the artist to the public.

For further information, visit the website http://www.westkowloon.hk/nothing or http://2015.venicebiennale.hk/.

Remarks

Tsang Kin-Wah
Born in Shantou, China, in 1976, Tsang Kin-Wah lives and works in Hong Kong. He studied fine arts at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and book arts at Camberwell College of Arts in London. Well known in Asia and abroad, his work is critically acclaimed for its innovative use of text and language, which he manipulates with computer technology to create immersive installations.

Tsang has exhibited extensively across the globe. Recent solo exhibitions include 30 years of CFCCA – Tsang Kin-Wah, Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester (2016); Tsang Kin-Wah: The Infinite Nothing, 56th Venice Biennale (2015); Ecce Homo Trilogy II, Thurgau Art Museum, Warth, Switzerland (2015); We Know: NOTHING, Ark Galerie, Yogyakarta (2013), and Ecce Homo Trilogy I, Pearl Lam Galleries, Hong Kong (2012). He has also presented his work in numerous group exhibitions and museums worldwide, such as Chinese Whispers, Kunstmuseum Bern (2016), Global Imaginations, Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden (2015) and many others. His work was showcased in M+’s second public exhibition, featuring Hong Kong artists, Mobile M+: Yau Ma Tei, in 2012.

Tsang is preparing for upcoming shows at Vancouver Art Gallery and the Guggenheim Museum. He is among a group of contemporary Chinese artists commissioned by the Guggenheim in 2016 for the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative. His work is held in a number of important private and public collections, including the Burger Collection and the Sigg Collection, both in Switzerland; the A3 Collection of the Kadist Art Foundation in San Francisco; the DSL Collection in Paris; the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo; the CODA Museum in the Netherlands; and the Hong Kong Museum of Art and the Hong Kong Heritage Museum.

About M+

Hong Kong’s museum for visual culture – encompassing twentieth and twenty-first century art, design and architecture, and moving image from Hong Kong, China, Asia, and beyond – M+ will be one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary visual culture in the world. Located adjacent to the park on the waterfront, the museum building is scheduled to open in 2019.

About West Kowloon Cultural District

Located on Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour, the West Kowloon Cultural District is one of the largest cultural projects in the world. Its vision is to create a vibrant new cultural quarter for Hong Kong. With a complex of theatres, performance spaces, and M+, the West Kowloon Cultural District will produce and host world-class exhibitions, performances, and cultural events, as well as provide 23 hectares of public open space, including a two kilometre waterfront promenade.

Hong Kong Arts Development Council

Established in 1995, the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC) is a statutory body set up by the government to support the broad development of the arts in Hong Kong. The major roles of HKADC are to fund, support and promote the broad development of the arts including literary arts, performing arts, visual arts as well as film and media arts in Hong Kong. Aiming to foster a thriving arts environment and enhancing the quality of life of the public, the HKADC is also committed to facilitating community-wide participation in the arts and arts education, encouraging arts criticism, enhancing arts administration and strengthening the work on cultural policy research.

HKADC has taken part in the International Art Exhibition of Venice Biennale since 2001, with an aim to enhance exchange between Hong Kong and other countries in the world. About 530,000 people have visited the past eight exhibitions.

Curators:

Doryun Chong

Doryun Chong was appointed in September 2013 as the inaugural Chief Curator at M+, a new museum of visual culture, which will open its Herzog and de Meuron-designed building in 2019 in the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong. In January 2016, he was promoted to Deputy Director and Chief Curator, M+. He oversees all curatorial activities and programs including acquisitions, exhibitions, learning and public programs, and digital initiatives encompassing the three main disciplinary areas of design and architecture, moving image, and visual art. The most recent exhibitions he co-curated include “Mobile M+: Live Art” and “Tsang Kin-Wah: The Infinite Nothing,” Hong Kong’s participation in the 2015 Venice Biennale. Prior to joining M+, Chong was Associate Curator of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA, where he organized projects including the critically acclaimed exhibition, “Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant-Garde” (2012) and acquired a diverse range of works, many of them non-western, for the museum’s collection.  From 2003 to 2009, Chong held various positions as curator in the Visual Arts department at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Stella Fong

Stella Fong is Lead Curator of Learning and Interpretation at M+. Previously, she worked as Senior Assistant Curator at Hong Kong Museum of Art (2010-2011) and Hong Kong Heritage Museum (1997-2009), and curated numerous exhibitions including megARTstore (2006), which featured over 300 works from the museum collection along with 10 commissioned projects by architects, artists and designers. Her other professional experiences include: curatorial internship at Liverpool Biennial in 2004; Asian Cultural Council Fellowship in 2007; and participation in the International Studio & Curatorial Program in New York (2007) and the International Curators’ Exchange Programme at Tate Modern (2010). Parallel to her full-time museum work, in 2008 she founded “wrongplace” a research collective focusing on exhibition practices and in 2010 instigated the one-year project “Exhibiting Experiments × Experimenting Exhibitions”, which questioned the exhibition itself as a form and process. She holds a M.A. in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art in London, a graduate diploma in Museum Studies from the University of Sydney and a B.A. in Fine Art from The Chinese University of Hong Kong.