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Big questions await you at Tsang’s show

20/ 8/2008

THERE’S a conundrum at the Chinese Arts Centre and it asks the question "What are you looking at?"

This is the title of Tsang Kin-Wah’s exhibition but it is also the simple query visitors will be asking themselves on entering the space in the Thomas Street centre in the Northern Quarter.

Patterns swirl around the room, yet meaning is initially impossible to define.

Move and walk around the space and glimpses of text become clear. Words scream out from the walls and suddenly the title becomes an aggressive confrontation: "So, what are YOU looking at?"

Tsang’s latest text installation combines glossy transparent cut-outs with sound to create a work which makes a very direct comment on issues of nationalism and racial prejudice.

The simplicity of the space masks the anger, frustration and fear revealed in the swirling text. At once concealed and exposed, strong language runs around the walls, ceiling and floor on a textual rampage of extreme emotion.

This latest installation from Tsang in his first solo exhibition in the UK is inspired by The Shining – the 1980 horror film starring Jack Nicholson and directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on the novel by Stephen King.

Here, a hotel has a personality of its own that slowly corrupts and infects the mind of the lead character until he is totally possessed by its evil spirit.

The story draws on the Gothic horror genre of a building having a conscious will.

Tsang’s work uses the model of the hotel as a physical environment with a defined character and influential power.

Haunting sounds and abusive words come together to emphasise the existence and destructive influence of racial discrimination and violence that lie hidden in the world around us.

As well as the installation in the gallery space, Tsang has wrapped the huge panes of glass that form the exterior of the Chinese Arts Centre in his elegant text-laden patterns.

Through the work Tsang aims to raise awareness of the violence and danger that lies hidden in our surroundings.

He says: "People are reluctant to see the darker side of the world and focus on the happy, image of a place.

"I want to show people that, despite appearances, a harsh, brutal side exists, which is something we may not want to recognise."

The second work, I Love U, is a pattern installation in the bathrooms at Chinese Arts Centre. At first glance the work seems like a beautiful pattern wallpaper.

On closer inspection, you realise it is a delicate combination of English and Chinese text arranged in a floral pattern swirling around the space.

In this private interior space where people loosen themselves, the work exposes a reality about many private, personal relationships.

Phrases such as "I love your Visa card" and "I love your handsome face" are hidden in the pretty pattern.

Appearing in pink, an iconic colour for romance, I Love U playfully challenges us to ask whether "I love you" is really valid if some or all of that love depends on wealth, possessions, looks or physique.

The artist was born in China in 1976 and graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2000 before taking his MA at the Camberwell College of Arts, London.

He has exhibited extensively in group exhibitions worldwide and had solo shows at the Yvon Lambert in Paris earlier this year and New York last year, as well as the Art-U room in Tokyo and the John Batten Gallery in Hong Kong.

As well as having his work recognised abroad, Tsang was awarded the Tokyo TDC Prize last year, the Sovereign Asian Art Prize 2005 and the Prize of Excellence at the Hong Kong Biennial in 2001.

ANGELA KELLY

- What are You Looking At? runs at the Chinese Arts Centre, Thomas Street, until September 28.