End of the Road — a Work by Ng Tsz-Kwan Extended Exhibition of FALSE SPACES Hong Kong and Japan Media Art Exchange Project
Online Reservation: https://calendly.com/endoftheroad
In response to the latest social distancing measures by the government, the exhibition will open to public from 18 September.
Mandatory body temperature checks are implemented. Visitors are required to clean their hands with hand sanitiser before admission, and wear their own mask inside the venue.
The exhibition requires online reservation. Maximum 4 visitors in each session, first come first served.
Presenter: Hong Kong Arts Centre
Co-curation: IP Yuk-Yiu, Hong Kong Arts Centre Curatorial Team
Artist: NG Tsz-kwan
Hong Kong artist Ng Tsz-Kwan brings his unique experiential installation back in Hong Kong after the participation in FALSE SPACES exchange exhibition in Japan last October. The experiential installation features a moving cinema chair that navigates the viewer along the track in a space full of video installations. In response to the social atmosphere and the gallery’s architectural design, the artist specifically re-creates the spatial arrangements and video contents for this version. Guided by the moving chair, the visitor travels through a set of desolate night scenes to experience the views from the end of the road. The journey is not only a documentary film that experimenting with space but also a personal psychological journey of the artist.
Curatorail Statement
End of the Road, an extended exhibition of FALSE SPACES, a project co-curated by Tokyo Arts and Space (TOKAS), Hong Kong Arts Centre (HKAC) and media art artist Ip Yuk-Yiu in 2019. FALSE SPACES is a cross-cultural exchange and an exhibition aiming to explore the multi-faceted nature of space, with the participation of six artists/artist unit, including Ng Tsz-Kwan, Stella So, WARE from Hong Kong, and Ito Ryusuke, Nagata Kosuke, Tsuda Michiko from Japan.
End of the Road is the latest variation of Ng Tsz-Kwan’s Solitary Cinema, an installation series experimenting with cinema viewing experience and investigating spatial cinema. The artist creates an alternative narrative of viewing experience with the designed mechanical and audio-visual settings, invites the audience to rethink and reimagine the boundaries and possibilities of cinema. The moving chair is the most prominent and important element in this piece of work, it has been shown three times in the previous versions of this series, automatically taking the audience into the journey of various video installations in the exhibition space. Rather than a chair, it is more like self-driving transportation, or even a figure of speech nowadays for ‘the allegory of the cave’—the people who lived chained to the wall of a cave, and can only take the shadows projected on the wall as reality—in Plato’s Republic.
The first two versions of Solitary Cinema can be interpreted as a series of abstract experiments with the aesthetics and formats of film languages and spatial interactions. In the third version featured in FALSE SPACES exhibition, it not only explored space as a means of creative intervention but also reified space into a detailed representation of a place (Hong Kong). Sitting on the self-driving device, the audience traveled through laps of black and white images of Hong Kong. The autonomous driving device and the imprisoned passenger conveyed a strong contrast and metaphor while the desolated monochromatic cityscapes on the screens quietly revealed and witnessed the deadly summer.
In the latest version, the artist continues his remake and disruption of traditional cinema experience, and at the same time composes intricate poetic documentation of a particular place. In the midst of form and documenting, End of the Road diffuses a mysterious atmosphere of magical realism. As to the previous versions, End of the Road consists of strong and in-depth personal feelings and subjective imagery, actively depicting the artist’s psychological status. Take a closer look, End of the Road is like a private road movie, the documented scenery outside is also the inner psychological journey of the artist. Buddha statues and various old objects abandoned in the wasteland formed a ghostly scenery on the brink of ruin; behind the spectacles, it not only is a projection of the shade of mind, but also a reflecting mirror that exposes the vast and endless history.
Ip Yuk-Yiu
Guest Curator
360° Exhibition Virtual Tour
About the artist
NG Tsz-Kwan
Ng Tsz-Kwan graduated from The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1997 with a Bachelor degree in Fine Art and earned his Masters at Central Saint Martins, UAL, in 2000. His practice is devoted to electronic and video art, and he has exhibited in London, Berlin, New York, Helsinki, Japan and Korea, in addition to numerous exhibitions in Hong Kong. He also maintains a design practice in which he applies interactive media design to the commercial and exhibition sectors, and explores the use of different media for integrated design solutions. He co-founded yucolab in 2006 when he partnered his interactive multi-media design company, N.T. Lab, with award-winning Hollywood-based creative design firm yU+co. In 2007, Perspective Magazine commended him as one of the 40 outstanding design professionals under the age of 40 in Greater China. He continues to lecture in multimedia, electronic arts and design-related departments of various universities and institutions in Hong Kong.
About the Curator
Ip Yuk-Yiu
Ip Yuk-Yiu is an experimental filmmaker, media artist, art educator and independent curator. His works, ranging from experimental films, live performances, media installations to video games, have been showcased extensively at major international venues and festivals, including European Media Art Festival, New York Film Festival (views from the avant-garde), the Image Festival, FILE Festival, VideoBrasil, Transmediale, NTT ICC and WRO media art Bienniale. He is the founder of the art.ware project, an independent curatorial initiative focusing on the promotion of new media art in Hong Kong. Ip has over fifteen years of curatorial experience in film, video and media art. Currently he is Associate Professor at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. His recent works explore hybrid creative forms that are informed by cinema, video games and contemporary media art practices. In recognizing his artistic contributions and achievements, he was awarded the Artist of the Year (Media Arts) in Hong Kong Arts Development Awards 2018.
Hong Kong Arts Centre
HKAC is a multi-arts centre that fosters artistic exchanges locally and internationally, bringing the most forward creations to Hong Kong and showcasing homegrown talents abroad.
HKAC stimulates innovation and promotes creativity. Being Hong Kong’s only independent non-profit multi-arts institution, HKAC offers exhibitions, screenings and performances, connecting the arts of Hong Kong to the rest of the world through programmes and collaborations.
FALSE SPACES Hong Kong and Japan Media Art Exchange Project
2019.10-11 FALSE SPACES Exhibition in Japan｜2020 Exchange Forum｜2020.09 End of the Road Extended Exhibition in Hong Kong
Tokyo and Hong Kong both struggle with space issues. In both countries, urban centers must accommodate disproportionately large populations, resulting in buildings growing taller and taller and personal space becoming more and more constricted within public spaces. The concept of “space” itself is open to a wide range of interpretations, spanning from the physical spaces of geography and location to the conceptual spaces of the personal and psychological realms, and even cyberspace. Furthermore, artists construct spaces, in the form of art, which differ from those of the real world in a pursuit to express their own world views.
FALSE SPACES is a cross-cultural exchange and an exhibition initiative aiming to explore the multi-faceted nature of space and its production as seen through the lens of contemporary artists from Japan and Hong Kong, initiated by Tokyo Arts and Space (TOKAS) in collaboration with the Hong Kong Arts Centre and independent curator IP Yuk-Yiu. The exhibition will feature works by six artists/artist unit, including ITO Ryusuke, NAGATA Kosuke, NG Tsz-Kwan, Stella SO, TSUDA Michiko and WARE. Each artist will develop and articulate his or her vision of “false space” through their respective works, exploring the production of space as a form of critical probing and disruptive poetics.
The exhibition will feature a wide variety of artworks that employ different media and materials including 3D scanned and printed objects, animation, driver-less vehicle, digital photography and video installation, communicating the diversity and complexity of spatial practices as seen and conducted by contemporary Japanese and Hong Kong artists. Through the creative showcase of their works, the project intends to facilitate collaboration between Japanese and Hong Kong artists, as well as to present their creative visions and critical propositions to the general audience in order to exchange views and dialogues on the subject of space that sprung from two Asian neighbours.
To reduce the risk of the spread of COVID-19, the presenter has implemented the following precautionary measures.
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Mandatory body temperature checks are implemented. Presenter reserves the right to refuse entry to any persons whose body temperature is higher than 37.5 degrees Celsius (as indicated by the temperature detector used by presenter) or to those who have significant respiratory infections into the venue.
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Presenter reserves the right to refuse entry to participants who are subject to compulsory quarantine. People living together and the participants have not been classified as "close contact of an infected person" of COVID-19.
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Participants are required to clean their hands with hand sanitiser before admission.
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Participants are required to wear their own mask inside the venue.
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Participants are required to complete a declaration form for travel history and health status.
The presenter will review the situation and adjust the measures if necessary. We appreciate your understanding.
The presenter reserves the rights of final decision on the arrangement.
