Event: Hyphenation: Contemporary Hong Kong Art Warren Leung, Wilson Shieh & Fiona Wong

Date: September 19 - October 7, 2001

Hyphenation: Contemporary Hong Kong Art is the inaugural exhibition for Grotto Fine Art Ltd featuring photography, paintings and sculpture by Hong Kong artists Warren Leung Chi Wo, Wilson Shieh Ka Ho and Fiona Wong Lai Ching.

Hong Kong artists are living in yet another interesting time. While previous generations relentlessly negotiated Chinese and Western influences in their search for an indigenous identity, artists today are facing a new paradox. Under "one country, two systems", they live in "hyphenation" as Hong Kong embodies two very different political systems and cultures. Here autonomy and dependency strangely coexist and the values of the city's colonial past contradict with its nationalistic future. This unique environment has profound effect on the three present artists whose works exhibit a sense of timelessness, placelessness, and nostalgia. They are representations of a new generation living in a historically anomalous city with constantly changing cultural specifics.

Warren Leung is one of the most avant-garde multi-media artists today. His works were recently featured at the prestigious Venice Biennale and received critical acclaim. This exhibition features Leung's photographic series of the cityscapes of New York, Venice and Hong Kong. Using both positive and negative spaces, unique focal points and shooting angles, Leung's photographs are abstract images of mass and void. Leung reduces familiar images into unfamiliar forms and in the process brings out unusual vista within familiar surroundings.

Wilson Shieh is an expert in traditional Chinese brush on silk painting. He recently received his Master of Fine Arts degree and stunned the public with his extremely fine and meticulous paintings at the graduation exhibition. Shieh's figures exert classical Tang dynasty spirit with their sensuous contours and refined features, yet their unconventional or at times erotic compositions shatter traditional restrictions and boundaries. Featuring fifteen works of the past three years, this exhibition represents the most comprehensive display of this prominent artist to date.

Fiona Wong is a well-known ceramic sculptor and teacher in Hong Kong. An accomplished sculptor with particular expertise in porcelain, Wong puts strong emphasis on the material's translucency and thereby expresses the delicate relationship between potency and fragility of life. This exhibition features Wong' newest works including a mixed-media series that uses the penetrating power of light to generate new and unexpected results through the porcelain surfaces. Working with a medium that defined China's greatest antiquities, Wong strives to redefine that tradition with her unparallel skills and contemporary vision.