Yeung Hok Tak: What A Big Smoke Ring

The exhibition celebrates Yeung Hok Tak‘s most recent artistic development: a body of vibrant, lush and humorous works that deal in an increasingly sophisticated way with the history of a city in relation to a world that considers both the present and the future uncertain. The title of the exhibition “What a big smoke ring” is about a case of mistaken recollection: Yeung Hok Tak remembers hearing a 1981 hit but gets the title and lyrics of the song wrong. For the artist, this is a ridiculous but critical starting point for his recent series of paintings that largely explore the dynamics of memory, nostalgia and history. The tension between truth and false memory is also a liberating force, allowing Yeung Hok Tak to render magical and hypnotic narratives at length.