Saan Dung Gei 山洞記
March 26 - May 11, 2019 | Blindspot Gallery | Hong Kong
Installation view: Saan Dung Gei《山洞記》| March 26 - May 11, 2019 | Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong
On November 2, 2018, Lam Tung Pang took the newly instated high-speed rail from Hong Kong to Beijing. During the eight-hour journey, there was a 20-minute ride through a dark tunnel in Hong Kong. As the train sped through the black hollow, emotions rose up out of the darkness, and “his usual optimism yielded to a magical realist vision of anxiety and social unrest that gave birth to the title of this work.”
Installation view: Saan Dung Gei《山洞記》| March 26 - May 11, 2019 | Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong
Exhibition view: The moment《一刻》(2019) | Video installation with rotating projection and printed plywood, and sound | Size variable | Courtesy Blindspot Gallery.
“At the very beginning, when I visited the space, I imagined obstructing the view to the gallery so that when the audience stepped out of the lift their view of the gallery would be blocked. The audience would then have to make a choice of going left or right to get into the space. Of course, it doesn’t matter whether you go left or right, since you end up in the same place. But what is important is the choice. This idea relates to my own experience; every day is like this.”
nstallation view: Saan Dung Gei《山洞記》| March 26 - May 11, 2019 | Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong
Journey Through the Landscape
Saan Dung Gei, which literally translates to “the mountain hole notes,” started as an idea for a novel about the journey that someone makes to visit a cave, and the exhibition consists of non-linear chapters that have no beginning or end.
The exhibition featured works made in 2018-2019, with which Lam challenges his own medium and creates a three-dimensional medley of paintings, installations, video sculptures, kinetic projection, and found objects.
Exhibition view: Reforming landscape《移山造景》(2019) | Ink, charcoal and acrylic on plywood | H180cm x L300 cm (triptych) | Courtesy Blindspot Gallery.
Installation view: Saan Dung Gei《山洞記》| March 26 - May 11, 2019 | Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong
Exhibition view: Erasing《拭擦》(2018) | Charcoal, acrylic, coloured printed paper and scale-models on plywood | L60cm x H80cm | Courtesy Blindspot Gallery.
Installation view: Saan Dung Gei《山洞記》| March 26 - May 11, 2019 | Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong
Exhibition view: Landscape in operation《景物手術》(2018) | Ink, charcoal, and acrylic on plywood | H180cm x L302 cm (triptych: H180cm x L85 cm, H180cm x L122 cm, H180cm x L95 cm) | Courtesy Blindspot Gallery.
“The landscape for me is a metaphor for the body. It’s also part of the structure of the book that I was supposed to write, Saan Dung Gei. When Eye and Hand—the characters I created when thinking about writing Saan Dung Gei—walk through the tunnel, it’s as if they’ve lost their memory, and when they come out of the tunnel they sit in front of the window to reflect on what they have lost, and question whether they are losing their memory. The window becomes the window of an operating room in the three paintings, Forming the landscape (2018), Self-operation (2018), and Landscape in operation (2018), not that of a house or an apartment.”
Exhibition view: (Left) Cover #4 - Saan Dung Gei《封面#4，山洞記》(2018) | Charcoal, acrylic and scale-model on plywood | L51cm x 41cm x 7.2cm
(Right) Saan Dung Gei, pp 55-56《山洞記，頁五十五及五十六》(2018) | Charcoal, ink and acrylic on plywood, diptych | L120cm x H80cm x H7.2 cm.
A Day of Two Suns
The passage of time and the notion of looping or doubling were central to the exhibition.
“In A Day of two Suns, the day is the paper and the sun is the projection. But in the Chinese title, Yat Leung Ting, it’s one sun two days, because you have two images.”
Below the screens, an assortment of plastic toys, bathed in the ghostly light of the projectors, recall fleeting childhood memories. The visitors themselves break this seemingly endless cycle of nostalgia. Walking along the screen, they find their own bodies swathed in the ethereal light of memory. Their own shadows become part of the landscape.
It becomes difficult to distinguish who is real and who is a projection, and what is current and what is pre-recorded. This unusual assortment of materials and subject matter are reflections of Lam’s own psyche, but also break down boundaries between artist and viewer, and memory and reality. Ultimately, Lam creates an unsettling collective experience of time and place: permanent in some ways, but fleeting in others.
Exhibition view: A Day of two Suns《一日兩天》(2019) | Video projections on loop with no sound on paper, objects | Installation size: 252cm x 867cm x 640cm | Video: 1’50”/1’50“/2‘09”/2’19“ | Courtesy of Blindspot Gallery.
Exhibition view: A Day of two Suns《一日兩天》(2019) | Video projections on loop with no sound on paper, objects | Installation size: 252cm x 867cm x 640cm | Video: 1’50”/1’50“/2‘09”/2’19“ | Courtesy of Blindspot Gallery.
Saan Dung Gei Turns《山洞記轉》
“For [Saan Dung Gei Turns], I put the train track through the room in both a tunnel and in open space, so that when you look at the train it is as if you are running between two worlds. There’s also an Otaleo clock installed nearby that never reaches 12, so you never reach another day.”
“For me, different resolutions are like different scales. People who use a scale model are very insistent on having the right scale, but I’m not, because different scales express different things. Scale is always a factor of my work, and in Saan Dung Gei Turns, there are two trains of different scales that run around the freestanding wall.”
Exhibition view: Saan Dung Gei Turns《山洞記轉》(2019) | HO-scale and N-scale train model, acrylic sheet, plywood, charcoal and ink | D230cm x L670cm x H30cm | Courtesy Blindspot Gallery
Exhibition view: OTALEO Clock《奧他利奧時鐘》(2019) | Looping video, HD display, metal frame | L77.5cm x H39.6cm x D26.5cm
“A Day of two Suns and the train piece, Saan Dung Gei Turns (2019), are core elements of the show, and there are some other elements around them that could be changed in different contexts. This is how I believe the work stays alive, as long as the artist is still alive.“
