Contemporary by Angela Li is proud to present Eugene Lemay’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong – Faded Memories – a series of large scaled landscape artworks. The idea of dark, abstract landscape originated from Lemay’s night navigating experience near his mother’s hometown.
Instead of following the classical tradition of recording wars as historic events, Faded Memories shifts the focus to the psychology of individuals. Behind the general impression of macho and precise mechanics, Lemay finds complex, changeable emotions which vary from individual to individual.
Unlike Lemay’s famous Letters series, Lemay no longer relies on text to express the inexpressible. Little gleaming pixels are scattered all over these mesmerizing landscapes in his memories. Lemay weaved his complex emotions – apprehension, confusion, shock, hysteria into his ancestors’ homeland. The large scale artworks do not simply showcase vast pieces of land through the eyes of a navigator, but also raw emotions of the artist.
The new series in the Faded Memories exhibition seems to be telling a personal story. “The works of Eugene Lemay present viewers with a string of somber visual riddles,” says renowned American art critic Richard Vine. But in fact, we all have our own answers to Lemay’s riddles, because we all, at one point or other in our lives, must have felt what Lemay felt – anxiety, uncertainty, shock and much more – even if we have not been night navigating in the Middle East where he once did.
Born in 1960 in Michigan, USA, Eugene Lemay emigrated to Israel as a teenager and served in the army. In 1984, he returned to the USA. He is currently the director of Mana Contemporary, an art and cultural centre in New Jersey, USA. He has exhibited extensively throughout the USA, Europe and Israel.
