After the exciting and provocative opening of our first show of 2013, Need. Want. Hunt, in Shanghai, we are excited to extend the exhibition to our Hong Kong home for its opening on March 28th! Please join us as we bring in the year of the snake with a tantalizing new show celebrating intuition, impulse and survival.
Instincts and hunches drive and propel us to interact with and fight our surroundings, yet our modern etiquettes have clouded these impulses in favor of a more ‘refined’ and calculated approach. As Freud noted in his essays entitled On Instinct and Morality ‘It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct’.1 Our chaotic and frenetically growing cities, the fervor of the Hong Kong streets, philosophical dilemmas, social and romantic obligations are all impacted one way or another with an instinctual urge to chase, to fight and to defeat that which is causing our stress. Even Tristan Tzara speaks about such concerns in his 1922 Lecture on Dada that expresses his disgust with ‘a false form of domination and restriction that dissuades rather than appeases man’s instinct of domination’.2
At Island6 we have certainly not abjured from our primal urges, in fact we are celebrating and reveling in our desire to NEED to WANT and to HUNT. We are after all, genetically hard-wired to breed and succeed in our modern Stone (or Concrete) Age environment. However, is there an illusion or prejudice that we possess a more complete intuition of reality than we really do? Intuition is crucial to artistic creation. It is something that should be encouraged, powered and harnessed. Even Nietzsche regarded instinct as ‘the most intelligent type of intelligence discovered so far.’3 It is possessed and honored by our greatest artists, musicians, soldiers and statesmen. Need. Want. Hunt is a celebration of these individuals and their actions. Nonetheless, many of us choose to ignore these Pavlovian responses and impulses. Why do we stifle those gut-wrenching urges and tingling inclinations? Have we been forced to forget the ways of our ancestors and delve into a world of superstition, devotion and materialistic hoarding?
Strip away all the myths and the human mind is still driven by the impulsive need to survive and to engage in pleasurable activities. We are all a chaotic medley of instinctual drives, culturally acquired instructions and individual experiences. Where do you fit in? Are you swayed and encouraged by the siren song of your gut and the free flight of imagination or do you filter your impulses in favor of a more “civilized’ reaction? You know where we stand on the issue.
The pieces selected for Need. Want. Hunt encapsulate the fervor, change and tension of the bustling ‘Pearl of the Orient’ in a myriad of new works that will hopefully inspire you to unleash and value your own primal inclinations. By exploring these themes in through photography, video, animation, sculpture, LED, and neon art works, Lu Dao presents our take on modern survival in a world oversaturated with facts, figures and pretension, a place where our senses have been malnourished and undervalued. Please join us on March 28th to celebrate the inaugural show of 2013 and inspire your senses to set themselves free!
