Kunsthalle Kowloon

First published on ArtSlant China.
Text by Robin Peckham.

Kong Chun Hei, "Snow," 2010

Kong Chun Hei: Gleaning
Gallery EXIT
G/F, 1 Shin Hing Street, Central SAR, Hong Kong, China
April 9, 2010 – May 22, 2010

Another much maligned practice in the contemporary Chinese art world is that of the sketch. Gallery Exit, the small young commercial space in Sheung Wan, has consistently been lending a voice to this medium that generally speaks slowly and in whispers. In the latest exhibition by one of the local stars of the genre, Kong Chun Hei offers a set of small-scale works in his incredibly laborious style: in ink or graphite, certain “significant objects” are rendered in a decidedly flat but more or less hyper-realist manner, resulting in something akin to hand-drawn photocopies. His previous outings included here, all deserving of recognition, include a sketched leather briefcase (both sides, replete with wrinkles in the calfskin), a rendering of the cover of Donald Kuspit’s seminal book “The End of Art” (accompanied by a more abstract hardcover book without any graphic art, perhaps the same text in hardcover), and a vinyl record (both sides again present, every groove true to life). The centerpiece of this exhibition, however, is “Snow” (2010), a series of almost a dozen drawings of television screens devoid of programming. Appropriately enough, they are both animated into one continuous stop-motion video of static and hung flat on the wall, demonstrating the flexibility of the medium as a floating concept and evincing a plea for the relevance of sketching as a stand-in for painting in its eternal conversation with obsolescence. There is also “Old Blank Album” (2010), a drawing of an empty photo album that recalls Qiu Xiaofei’s comparable painterly project, and “The Eraser” (2010), a literal pile of ink on paper that collapses medium and subject in a way that seems to quote Kwan Sheung Chi, subject of another recent major solo exhibition at the same gallery. None of this may be immediately or spectacularly arresting, but it is more than comforting to realize that these black-and-white visions of silence retain a certain space for speaking.