Press Release

Angela SU: IN BERTY WE TRUST!

26 November – 21 December 2013
Opening & Book Launch: Tuesday, 26 November, 6 – 8 pm
Gallery EXIT, 3/F, 25 Hing Wo Street, Tin Wan, Aberdeen, Hong Kong

Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 1100 – 1800

Gallery EXIT is pleased to present IN BERTY WE TRUST!, the second solo exhibition Angela SU with the gallery. Anchoring around the illustrated novel BERTY, a collaborative project with Mary Lee and Nadim Abbas, the exhibition quietly unravels the points of transgressions that appear when human dependence on technology is taken to the extreme.

Staged as a dialogue between conceptual writings, drawings and video animation, the exhibition presents figures that stand defiant against the cookie-cutter images of bodies in contemporary society. It offers instead alternative images of torture machines, human flesh and organs; a dreary and austere inquiry of the body and machine dualism/dichotomy.

Angela SU, “E4 B7 84,” 2013, ink on drafting film, 122 x 300 cm
徐世琪，《E4 B7 84》，2013年，制图胶片上水墨画,122 x 300厘米

Among the presented works, the 3-meter long drawing “E4 B7 84” examines this entangled association by means of powerful and daring imageries. A cross section of stretched arms pierced and chained to a gear mechanism, this work presents a body striped off from any type of human kinship. The remaining lump of muscles and flesh suggest a silent surrender to the inevitable force of progress.

Merging various writing styles and genres, graphics and images, scribbles and illustrations, BERTY brings its readers through a fantastical journey through classic texts on the machine and the human condition. As a centrepiece of the exhibition, the novella not only provides a key to understanding Su’s works in the exhibition, but is also an experiment to blur the boundary between visual art and literature.