Le Songe Creux + Mountain and Sea Series

Occidental knowledge,  oriental image

Yang Feng

The exhibition brings together two scholar artists, Frank Vigneron  and Ho Siu Kee. Having known each other for decades, they have  comprehensive understanding of each other’s works. Despite their  distinctive approaches and practices, the works in the exhibition have  shown the oriental philosophical influences on their artistic practice and  their introspective exploration.  

Have been living in the city of Hong Kong, where he was born in, for  decades, Prof. Vigneron’s works are influenced by oriental art and  philosophy. He started to create his painting with roller-pen from the  1980s. Dense, non interlaced lines, with random void dotted on the  plane, constructed an ever-changing abstract world. He named all his  works with the name Le Songe Creux (means daydreaming in French),  and consider the creation of the works writing. This repetitive writing is  like daily practice, which requires enormous dedication. “Two aspects of  the work that have always been present in my mind, and the reason why  I see this project as life-long and ongoing, have been to relate them to  the notion of time and to make myself absent from the work.”（Frank  Vigneron, Le Songe Creux - between literati theory, Minimalism and Maximalism,,2011）. The works in this exhibition covers  more than 15 years of Vigneron’s practice. Le Songe Creux 173 from  2001 is a delicate monochrome work of abstraction, and Le Songe  Creux 341 from 2017 is a colorful painting in the form of a rectangular  whirlpool.

Prof. Ho Siu Kee’s recent Mountain and Sea Series in the exhibition  is a departure from his earlier works ( e.g Aureola Series). “I’ve been  using the body as the medium for artistic exploration for more than two  decades. In recent years, I’m working towards the material existence  of the body and the relationship between the body and the mind. In the  end, the body has its limitation, and the turn from body to mind looks  like a way out.”(in artist’s own words). Mountain and water are the two  key elements in the recent series. Bronze is forged into the shape of  mountain, and the water is the origin of life. Comparing with the earlier  works which resembles more western artistic language, the works in  this exhibition presents a new form: all objects contains water, and the  round and sphere structures. “Water has no shape, it is the container  that gives it shape, be it square or sphere. The sphere has no beginning and no end.” (in artist’s own words). This is full on oriental philosophical  thinking.

Prof. Vigneron is a scholar from the west, and Prof. Ho Siu Kee has  experiences of oversea education. But the two artists’ works reflected  more oriental influences and philosophical tendency. From occidental  knowledge to oriental knowledge, to oriental image; from the inside  to the outside; from the body to the mind; these are all meaningful  dialogues the exhibition tries to present.