Eason Tsang Ka Wai: Powerless

Blindspot Gallery is pleased to present “Powerless”, the first solo exhibition of Hong Kong artist Eason Tsang Ka Wai, which features his newest works employing different media.
“Powerless” spotlights the evolution of Tsang’s artistic practice from an exclusive focus on photography to his experiments with other media and subjects, and a distinct perception that subverts common perspectives on everyday existence.

Continuing on the theme of living in the city in his iconic photography series New Landmark, Tsang shifts his focus from public space in his previous works to interior or otherwise closed spaces in his latest creations. Between images from daily life and the exposed interiors, the set of light boxes in A failed light box pinpoint a breakdown of order that is illuminated. Reversed perspectives also run through the video installations from the Housework series. Where the repetitive visuals in Housework No.1, which features the projection of the autonomous movement on a mop on sand paper, delineates the physical contradictions that fill our surroundings; Housework No.3 denotes the futility of one’s mundane actions. Boring 30 seconds, a video work encapsulating the oppressive passage of time through the night, highlights the paralysis and aphasia of the individual against the tremendous social mechanisms at work.
Ambiguity underlies one’s relationship with spatiality and temporality, as captured in the video installation 52.404705, -1.497604, whose visuals of floating clouds hint at time passing that subtly negates the coordinates for the viewers. Redundant cables, a set of installations of cables that run through part of the exhibition space, creates an implicit route for the visitors as well as an explicit link between night and day in the exhibition.
Selected works from Tsang’s iconic photography series New Landmark, will also be on display. New Landmark has been most recently featured in the annual flagship exhibition at Hong Kong Arts Centre titled “Familiar Otherness: Art Across Northeast Asia”, and in “CHINA 8”, a comprehensive survey exhibition of contemporary Chinese art held in eight cities in Germany.

About Eason Tsang Ka Wai
Born in 1986 in Hong Kong, Eason Tsang Ka Wai graduated from the School of Creative Media of City University of Hong Kong with a major in Photography in 2013. He has been working on various personal photography projects since 2011. Tsang has participated in several group exhibitions including “Works in Progress” of the CHINA 8 project (Museum Folkwang, Germany and Palma de Mallorca, Spain 2015), “Familiar Otherness: Art Across Northeast Asia” (Hong Kong Arts Centre, 2015) and “architekturbild 2015” (various locations in Germany, 2015). In 2013, Tsang was shortlisted in the Hong Kong Contemporary Art Awards 2012 with his Rooftop series. His work is collect by Hong Kong Heritage Museum. Tsang currently lives and works in Hong Kong.

About the curator Leo Li Chen
Leo Li Chen is a curator and researcher based in Hong Kong. Chen is a research fellow at the Department of Public Policy in City University of Hong Kong. His main research interest focuses on spatial and aesthetic politics, and artistic intervention in Chinese cities. Chen is also a long-term contributing writer for LEAP, Art World, Art China Magazine and TANC. He was the curator of “Adrift” (OCAT Shenzhen, China, 2016), “Unlimited Space: The Re-imagination of Everyday Life” (starprojects, Hong Kong, 2016) and “That has been, and maybe again” (Para Site, Hong Kong, 2016).