M+ Pavilion unveiled with solo exhibition of Tsang Kin-Wah: Nothing

M+, the new museum for visual culture in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, today inaugurated the solo exhibition of Tsang Kin-Wah: Nothing at M+ Pavilion, the home for M+ exhibitions in the district in the run up to the museum opening in 2019. Co-presented by M+ and Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC) following the success of 56th Venice Biennale presentation, Tsang Kin-Wah: The Infinite Nothing in 2015, the newly commissioned work in response to the Venice exhibition last year, will be available for public visits from 9 September to 6 November.

At the inaugural exhibition ceremony today, Chief Executive Officer of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA) Mr Duncan Pescod said, “Today marks a new chapter for M+, not only because M+ now has a base for putting the works on display, but it also signifies that the museum will be able to run test programmes by engaging a wider audience through exhibitions and programmes showcasing M+’s own collection.”

HKADC’s Chief Executive Ms Winsome Chow said, “After showcasing Hong Kong visual arts in Venice Biennale since 2001, the Hong Kong exhibitions are gaining more exposure and recognition internationally, especially in the last two rounds of collaboration with M+. Following the remarkable success of Tsang Kin-Wah’s exhibition in Venice last year, we are delighted to showcase his work to the Hong Kong audience in this special venue, the brand new M+ Pavilion.”

Co-curated by Doryun Chong, M+’s Deputy Director and Chief Curator, and Stella Fong, Lead Curator, Learning and Interpretation with support from Sharon Chan and Winnie Lai as Assistant Curators of M+, Nothing is a site-specific installation by local artist Tsang Kin-Wah who will bring to viewers an immersive experience that addresses the essence of life and human beings’ inability to escape fate. Combining 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.

“As I conceived this exhibition, I thought of many different theories. Some of them were related to the previous exhibition in Venice, such as Nietzsche’s ‘eternal recurrence’ and the idea of the cycle, “said Tsang Kin-Wah. “The text of Macbeth is a reference point this time. It discusses life in a way as if from a position of profound experience. There are many desires you want to pursue, but in the end, all of it is illusory, to a degree that those things can even seem very empty.”

“Tsang Kin-Wah is an artist who is widely respected and admired not only for his singular visual vocabulary but also the seriousness and rigour in his thinking and conceptualisation that he brings to his body of work. What you would get in this exhibition is a visual, perceptual and total experience. But ultimately it is about what it means to be an existence in a contemporary society and he examines this in a very powerful perception-changing and perhaps life-changing ways,” said Doryun Chong, Co-curator of the exhibition.

Tsang Kin-Wah: Nothing will run from 9 September to 6 November 2016, opening from Wednesday to Sunday and public holidays, and from 11am to 6pm. On every Saturday, Sunday and public holidays during the exhibition period (except 17 September), shuttle bus service will be available from 11am to 6pm between West Kowloon Project Site Office and the M+ Pavilion. For details please visit http://www.westkowloon.hk/nothing.

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

Admission

Free

Special transportation arrangement

On every Saturday, Sunday and public holidays during the exhibition period (except 17 September), shuttle bus service will be available between West Kowloon Project Site Office and the M+ Pavilion from 11am to 6pm.

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.

About 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). She co-curated “Tsang Kin-Wah: The Infinite Nothing,” Hong Kong’s participation in the 2015 Venice Biennale and curated M+ Rover, a travelling creative studio that tours to schools and community spaces in 2016. 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.