Gravity 重⼒
Soluna Fine Art, Hong Kong
2022
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25 November to 15 December
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Rosalyn Ng, Tobe Kan, Uzine Park, Zang Zong-Son
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The exhibition showcased a group of paintings and mixed media drawings of botany, still life, and landscapes that oscillate between abstraction-figuration, portraying liminal space between the mind and the physical world.
“I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?”
Zhuangzi (Chuang-tzu; 莊子)
The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the First Three Chapters of the Chuang-Tzu, 369 BCE to 286 BCE <Paraphrased from the original version>
The butterfly dream parable by Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi has deep roots in Taoist thoughts toward defining reality versus illusion, explaining that our awareness of happy existence and self-contentment can consciously transform the fixed reality. However, nature, the living system, is not free from chaos—when unpredictable plagues and earthquakes emerge catastrophically outside of our control. A butterfly, an organism most robbed of the power to inflict pain on others, cannot be romanticized for its only delightful aspects without considering its ephemeral life cycles of instability.
Precisely is why the concept of gravity may alleviate our perception of reality. Gravity is the fundamental life force that keeps all opposing principles shaping the environment into one seemingly orderly blueprint. The exhibited works are also portraying botany, flowers, trees, and landscapes composed of interdependent colors, lines, and shapes. However, although the viewers may expect to feel like they are looking at pristine and paradisal French impressionist landscapes, they also discover the deformation and erasure of visual properties that relate to the raw truth about nature.
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