Engulfing – 2023.06.13

The Rui Cunha Foundation presents today, Tuesday, June 13th at 6:30pm, the Solo Exhibition “Engulfing”, by Chi Kei Kuok (郭芷淇), a young local artist who presents a variation set of traditional Chinese Gongbi paintings, curated by Henry Wong (Sio Hang Wong).

The 27 artworks have in common the theme of water immersion, the movement of bubbles, the fluid forms of aquatic elements, such as fish, in a color composition that is repeated from one painting to another. Curator Henry Wong considers the artist’s delicate technique like a «poetic nature of suffering», while she submerges in a world of precision and detail with the application of mineral color pigments, layered over the transparency of silk.

«Kuok doesn’t like to talk about her art. When I discussed her works with her, she talked about her love for the bubbles and their colors in these paintings, as if everything was just for looking good. But how did she, who is good at painting Chinese Gongbi style portraits, change her style and create a relatively large-scale work with only ‘bubbles’? This implies that she had actually more to tell. (…) In fact, this work is not as peaceful and cute as it seems, but is shrouded in uneasiness», Wong explains.

And he elaborates on the exhibition preface: «The relationship between the images and the audience is asymmetrical: the sweet colors, ever-changing shapes and combinations are distracting the audience’s emotions, so that when the bubble is being appreciated, that fish is being engulfed by the bubbles which are the source of its suffering. That fish is not just a motif, but more like the incarnation of the artist herself. Through the plight of this representation, she reveals her state as a contemporary youth – a lonely self-formed by this highly individualized era, which feels unable to be empathized with», says Henry Wong.

The artist also confirms that «this exhibition can be regarded as an extension of my subconscious. Even if others can understand my emotions, they cannot fully empathize. (…) These bubbles are the containers of my emotions, and their dynamics are the flow of my emotions and thoughts», she reveals. The patient, meticulous work comes from her Gongbi (工筆) training, a realistic technique in Chinese traditional painting, meaning fine brushstrokes. The technique requires the drawing of delicate lines to represent objects, before washes of paint and color are added, layer by layer, to approach the perfection of refinement and art.

Chi Kei Kuok was born in Macau and graduated from the Visual Arts Course at the Macau Polytechnic University in 2022, majoring in Chinese Painting. She is a member of the Macau Artist Society, the Macau Youth Art Association, the Yu Un Chinese Calligraphers and Painting Association of Macau and the Center for Creative Industries.

The exhibition will be open until June 17, 2023.

Admission is free.
Don’t miss it!
For Macau, Further and Higher!

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