Opening Week: 25 March – 30 March 2019 11a.m. – 7p.m.
21/F, Coda Designer Centre 62, Wong Chuk Hang Road, Hong Kong
Infinitive Mutability
Exhibition Dates: 25 March – 1 June 2019 11a.m. – 7p.m.
Five years after opening their first overseas venue in the prime location of Central Hong Kong’s Entertainment Building, Axel Vervoordt Gallery is relocating to an expanded two-level space in Wong Chuk Hang, the dynamic artistic hub on the south part of Hong Kong Island. Set to open during Art Basel in Hong Kong from 25 March to 30 March 2019, this relocation marks an important new step in anchoring Axel Vervoordt Gallery’s presence in the region. The 8,000 square foot gallery offers a larger-scale space that will provide the opportunity for curated shows with few limitations, allowing for the presentation of larger works and giving artists a strong platform for their work.
The Wong Chuk Hang space will enable Axel Vervoordt Gallery to grow their roster of artists, while fostering relationships with contemporary Asian artists and to participate in more regional art fairs such as West Bund (Shanghai) and KIAF (Seoul). The gallery’s annual programme includes four exhibitions per year by established artists, punctuated by showcases of work by younger and emerging artists.
The new space will open with a group show entitled, Infinitive Mutability, featuring works by Peter Buggenhout, Kimsooja and Bosco Sodi. Taking its cue from Jacques Derrida’s concept of deconstruction, the exhibition aims to focus on the limitless shifts of meaning and possibility offered by any new interpretation of a text or a work of visual art.
(Left to right) Peter Buggenhout (Dendermonde, Belgium, 1963), Gorgo #5, 2005, Mixed Media (animal blood, horse hair, iron, paper, pigment wood), 87 x 116 x 85 cm; Kimsooja (Daegu, Korea, 1957), Bottari, 1998, Used Korean Bedcovers, used clothing, used towels, 63 x 56 x 40.60 cm, Photo © Jan Liégeois; Bosco Sodi (Mexi City, 1970), Untitled, 2017, Mixed media on linen, 26.5 x 17.5 cm, Photo © Jan Liégeois. Courtesy Axel Vervoordt Gallery.
Axel Vervoordt Gallery is now proud to present Belgian artist Peter Buggenhout (1963) as part of the gallery’s roster. His presence in the Hong Kong space may be considered as a prelude to his large solo show in the Antwerp gallery next fall. Buggenhout’s work is raw and layered, a visual clash stitched up with organic waste material, like dust, and other visceral, physical materials. The whole often forms colossal, abject and amorphous installations evoking mythical associations. As the artist has stated, his sculptures “cannot be memorised because any singular reading would be incomplete”.
Infinitive Mutability will include two sculptures from the Gorgo series and On Hold series. Both works, very different in scale, have been realised through decisively removing objects from their own original context, retracting them from original shape and meaning and thus opening them up to a multiplicity of meaning.
The Korean multidisciplinary conceptual artist Kimsooja (1957) will present two early pieces Deductive object (1997) and Bottari (1998). The selected works show the centrality of textile in the artist’s practice and methodology. Kimsooja investigates questions relating to the human condition such as nomadism, migration, and interpersonal relationships.
Bosco Sodi (1970) is presenting a series of paintings and a sculpture trace of his MURO, installed earlier this year in the Axel Vervoordt Gallery in Antwerp. MURO represents Sodi’s first public art intervention, conceived in 2017, for the Washington Square Park sculpture project and performance. In this work, 1600 clay bricks, handcrafted by Oaxacan craftsmen, form a wall intended to continually be transformed through the public’s interactions. The artist considers that “a wall can never be eternal” and that all physical and cultural barriers can always be reconfigured through the community’s action and will. In his paintings, Sodi develops the depths of bare pigment, the magma that it represents when projected onto a canvas. The mutability for Sodi represents the impossibility for the artist to define and control the constant alteration of the material used for his canvasses.
The second floor of the new gallery space is conceived as a large and convivial cabinet where works from different artists from the Axel Vervoordt Gallery can be exhibited in a cyclical turnover. In particular, during the opening, master works from the Gutai and Dansaekhwa movement will be housed in dialogue with works from the Zero Group and Contemporary artists, such as El Anatsui, Kazuo Shiraga, Tsuyoshi Maekawa and Shozo Shimamoto, to name a few.
“This is an exciting moment for the Axel Vervoordt Gallery. We have evolved strongly over the last five years and made important statements with our curated exhibitions along with the publications of our artists’ monographs. We aim to put the same energy in to our exhibitions in Hong Kong as we continue to do in Antwerp, and with the expanded space look to further develop our work as a gallery and mark our presence on the international art scene. We will continue to explore the artistic dialogue between East and West which is so central to the ethos of our organisation,” says Boris Vervoordt, Director Axel Vervoordt Gallery.
