Opening Rave | March 30
In celebration of Hong Kong Art Week and the opening of our two March exhibitions, Xavier Cha - Ruthless Logic and Jes Fan - Mother Is A Woman, Empty Gallery will host an all-night opening party featuring a performance of speculative bebop and imaginary free jazz by the London/Paris-based acoustic quartet Ahmed followed by an evening of intense leftfield dance music brought to us by DJs Cera Khin, Mumdance & Logos, and Rob Hall. RSVP is essential.
On our upper floor, we are pleased to present an ambitious new moving image work by NYC-based artist Xavier Cha. Produced at the legendary Shaw Studios with the assistance of an all-star group of Hong Kong film industry veterans, Ruthless Logic is a hypnotic and dance-like deconstruction of the stylistic and formal tropes associated with the martial arts “fight sequence”. Extending Cha’s ongoing engagement with the affective and perceptual economy of spectatorship into the specialized realm of kung fu cinema, Ruthless Logic presents a series of disorienting, hallucinogenic, and emotionally charged fragments depicting an endless confrontation between two martial artists.
On our lower floor, Hong-Kong born and NYC-based artist Jes Fan presents a group of works entitled Mother Is A Woman which propose an expanded notion of biological and bodily materiality rooted in their investigation of transgender politics, body modification, and applied science. Fan transforms the entire floor into a series of flesh-toned, fur-carpeted chambers populated by table-like sculptural forms whose biomorphic curves are reminiscent of organ linings, replete with bundles of nerves and fluid globules. Diaphanous “curtains” of transparent pill-casings filled with soybeans – one of the key ingredients used in the creation of commercial estrogen – and cast-silicone yams comprise a second group of pieces speculating on the uncanny origins of artificial hormones, for which Fan has also created a feminizing topical cream containing their mother’s estrogen.
Please note that Xavier Cha - Ruthless Logic and Jes Fan - Mother Is A Woman will be on view to the public from Tuesday, March 27th onwards but there will be no reception until Friday, March 30th. For details of our event programme, please visit our website and Facebook page.
