SILAS FONG

Author: silasfong

  • Under the Linden

    2016- Installation
    Direct UV inkjet print on roller blind, inkjet print mounted on translucent black acrylic plates
    200 x 140 cm; 180 x 90 cm, 90 x 90 cm (2 pcs)

    The room I lived was on the first floor of a building in a small quiet street. It was surrounded by towering trees with not much traffic. In winter, snow covered the trees and the roofs of the houses. In summer, the flourishing leaves almost pushed their way into the window. Sunlight fell into my room, casting on my table a blue and greenish shadow, swayed gently with the wind.

    The room I live is on the sixth floor of a high rise in an estate made up of ten blocks. The view from the window stays the same throughout the year. Tall concrete penetrates the hazy sky. In the small slit of the harbour view, I can see ships passing by. Sunlight also comes into my room, but it looks quite different. It is just the reflection from a window of the building opposite.

    One day I walked around the streets alone. I looked at people’s faces, but few looked back at me. They weren’t even aware. They don’t look around now. They may well be living a second life in another space and time. At some point I walked pass a tree and realised there was a big sky high above the black mirror.

    Exhibited in
    POST PiXEL. Animamix Biennale 2015 – 16, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, Hong Kong

     

    椴樹底下
    2016-     裝置
    捲簾上UV噴墨打印, 透光黑色亞加力膠片上噴墨打印
    200 x 140 厘米; 180 x 90 厘米, 90 x 90 厘米 (2 件)

    我住過的房間位於一條寂靜的小街上，就在樓房的第一層，被大樹包圍着，沒有太多車輛經過。冬天時屋頂和樹上都蓋着積雪；夏天時樹葉都快長到窗內。陽光射進房間裏，書桌上晃動着一叢藍綠色的影子。

    我住的房間位於十棟屋苑大廈其中一棟的六樓。窗外風景四季如一，石屎高聳入朦朧的半空，大廈之間的縫隙中還能看見海港上船隻駛過。儘管陽光也能走進我的房間，但看來頗為不同，因為這是對面大廈窗門反射過來的光線。

    有一天我在街上獨自游蕩，我凝望着路人的臉，但他們都沒有察覺，甚少有人回望，現在他們都不再四處看。或許他們可能在另一時空過着第二個人生。走過某棵樹下，發現黑色鏡子上還有一大片天空。

    展覽
    像素之後　動漫美學雙年展2015-16, 香港邵逸夫創意媒體中心

     

    Overview

    Reflection of the shadow from the roller blind, the ceiling and image of the table top

    DSC_5488_w

    DSC_5297_w

  • 展評：低緯度的不透明


    文 – 蔡影茜

    藝術論壇 2012-12-14

    廣州畫廊從選址到命名，都表明了一種廣東幫式的譜系學態度。對於廣州不大的當代藝術圈來說，這不僅僅是一個商業畫廊的開幕，亦意味著年輕藝術家對不同藝術生態的嘗試和開發。參加展覽的6位藝術家，除了劉茵之外，全部來自香港。展覽主題“低緯度的不透明”欲言又止，日常生活和文化的政治化幾乎消解了語言的紐帶作用，它並不能令即將到來的“一小時生活圈”單純美好起來。

    展廳入門右側地面上放著成排大小不一的電視屏幕，畫面上交替的黑夜和白晝截取自東京、香港、泰國和山東等地公共空間的網上監控視頻，作品題為《虛渡時光》 （2013），來自東莞出生、香港成長的藝術家黃永生。劉茵的暗黑系少女敘事在小畫幅手繪和緊湊的日常空間中往往得心應手，但延展到孤立的中幅布面丙烯上便被稀釋了，唯有少女們標誌性的大眼睛讓人無力。方琛宇2012年曾在觀察舍舉辦個展“連續劇”，她的《午後》（2015）是一套二十本的A5小書，包裹小書的黑色厚膠袋和小木桌，為藝術家個人記憶的私密性提供了物質載體。香港日益繁榮的博覽會、畫廊和藝術家工作室體係對於年輕藝術家的生涯極具塑造作用，曾為一線藝術家代筆的WT Ip則通過裝飾性極強的抽像畫面和自身的匿名策略回應了這一現狀。 MMI影像團隊將五台監視器放在高低不同的帶輪支架上，同步播放著《西遊記》角色的各種現成影像片段，包括上海美術電影製片廠於60年代拍攝的動畫片《大鬧天宮》，央視80年代拍攝的電視劇《西遊記》以及周星馳經典的《大話西遊》等等。配合精心剪輯的對白和聲效，推著監視器遊走的五位演員上演了一場以特定年代的大眾文化影像為臉譜的荒誕儀式。因為海關扣押的原因未能展出吳佳欣作品《海浪》，一再地提醒我們隔閡的真實存在，它橫亙於當代藝術共享的語言和圖像之上。

    原文: http://artforum.com.cn/archive/8849

  • Flat D, 6/F, Aldrich Garden

    CASE – Project Space of Photography, Academy of Media Arts Cologne
    18 Jun 2015– 22 Jun 2015

    Text by Anthony Yung

    Flat D, 6/F, Aldrich Garden’ is the title of this exhibition but also the artist’s home address. This implies a doubleness: an address is functional and indicative – as a concept, it is most commonly understandable – but at the same time it is also meaningless because it is not meant to help you to find the place, as for the audience of this exhibition it refers to a place so far away that it may as well not exist. Such a conceptual doubleness epitomizes Silas Fong’s artistic project in temporal experiences and psychological activities – things that are utterly personal, yet also entirely common.

    The address is also giving us hints with which to understand the exhibition: first of all, it brings us to Hong Kong. A global financial center built first by manufacturing industries (the predecessor of ‘the world’s factory’), then by financial-trading freedoms, the city likes to evaluate its business and its people in terms of productivity and efficiency. In this society of pragmatism, wasting time is no different to burning billnotes. Growing up here, people pick up an almost ethical obligation to spend time in the ‘correct way’, and for the younger generation to not do so is a major rebellion. With this context in mind, Fong’s works are actually a research on sheer unproductivity, on the moments that we learn to feel guilty and negative about. He questions if these moments really are worthless and whether our personal histories are not in fact constituted within all these ‘ahistorical times’.

    The address also brings us to Flat D, a piece that was first shown in the Hong Kong Art Centre in 2015. There, Fong had taken corner of the exhibition space and reconstructed it into his bedroom at home. He then invited visitors to spend ten minutes in this room. With the time set to precisely 10 minutes, and the fact that there was not anything at all in the room to look at or contemplate, visitors could do nothing but go with whatever came up their minds. Coming inside Flat D, their plans, their experiences of the day were interrupted, though voluntarily, and now they had to stop and think about the interrupted. Eventually, the piece provided an experience and a question: what does this interruption, these ten minutes that are cut out of our life, mean to us?

    Three other pieces within the exhibition (Work Report for Museum Ludwig, Attendance Report for Academy of Media Arts Cologne and Passenger Report for Meinfernbus) can be seen as elements of ‘fieldworks’ relating to such research – with pictures and texts, he documents the activities of his mind during long hours undertaking internship duties in a museum, attending classes and taking long bus rides. These records may remind us of the typical texts of ‘stream of consciousness’, in particular Camus’s Outsider, but literariness is not Fong’s main concern here. What he tries to explore is the common rather than the unique – he wants these records to remind us of our own experiences. Think about it, we all talk to ourselves during moments of boredom and distraction, when in our minds words start to flow randomly, unbounded from social norms (manners, ethics, and so on) and a chain of memories appears, no matter how irrelevant they are to the things immediately surrounding us. Using the artist’s own experiences as case studies, these pieces ask us to pay attention to these conversations we have with ourselves.

    Even two years ago, Fong was already a considerably experienced artist. Coming to ‘study’ in Germany, what is the most precious to him is perhaps not the new information to even methodologies, but the unfamiliar environment, a sense of distance and indifference that provokes thoughts and experiences. For as we can tell from these works, the core theme of Fong’s practice is an inevitable loneliness, and art is a tool to process and transcend it and make us understand ourselves better. In this sense, we may see the last work in this exhibition as a beautiful metaphor – Afternoons (2015) is a series of books, but books with no words, no knowledge, no ‘history’ – just the sunlight that changes as time goes by. It symbolizes what Fong attempts to create with art: a sensitivity to the subtleties of our time and our mind.

    德國科隆媒體藝術學院CASE攝影項目空間
    2015年6月18 – 22 日

    文章 – 翁子健

    「愛蝶灣6樓D室」是方琛宇這次展覽的題目，但也是他家的地址。這個雙重性的意味在於：作為一個普通的概念，地址是功能性及指示性的，但以這個地址命名一個在科隆發生的展覽，這個地址便不再有任何實用意義，因為作為題目它不是為了讓人去尋找這個具體的地點，對於觀看這次展覽的人來說，甚至這個地點是否存在也不要緊。這種雙重性正是方琛宇創作中的核心命題：那些既是完全私密的、又同時極盡人所共知的事。

    這個地址當然也是一個提示，幫助我們去理解這個展覽：首先，它指向香港，全球金融中心，曾經的「世界工廠」的大腦，以貿易自由聞名，一個以效率和生產力作為最高評判標準的地方。這個務實的社會篤信時間就是金錢。在這兒成長的人自然而然地帶有一種道理的責任感：必須以「正確」的方式利用時間，而浪費時間就是一種反叛。從這個角度看，不妨將方琛宇的創作理解為一種對反生產力的研究，是對於那些令人罪疚和難受的不事生產的時刻之探討。他的追問是：難道我們的個人歷史不是由無數的這些「非歷史性時間」構成的嗎？這些時刻怎麼可能會毫無意義呢？

    這個地址也指向《D室》，那是這次展覽上的一件作品，2015年在香港藝術中心第一次展出。當時，方利用了展覽的一個角落，將之改造，仿製成自己家中睡房。展覽期間，他邀請觀眾每人獨自在房間內等待10分鐘，房門鎖上，任何計時工具都不得帶上。觀眾知道他將會在房中等待10分鐘，但是房間裡沒有任何值得一看的東西，他們只能把注意力放在自己的頭腦內。他們的日程計劃，他們的體驗，好比是突然被中斷了一下，儘管他們是自願參與這件事的，但是他們也不得不停下來，面對這個中斷。這就是這個作品的核心命題：這個沒有理由的中斷，這10分鐘裡的發生的事情，它意味著什麼？在未來我們還會記得它嗎？

    當下這次展覽的其他三件作品可被視為方的研究之考察素材。他以圖片及文字記錄了他在美術館實習值班時，在上課時，和在長途巴士上的心理活動。這些文字可能會有點像經典的意識流小說，尤其是卡謬的《局外人》，但是文學性不是方關心的問題。方要探討的是一種普遍的東西，而不是一些特殊的私人經驗。試想：在沉悶和分神時，我們是否都會在頭腦裡跟自己說話？我們都跟自己說了些什麼？這些話是偶然的嗎？它們為什麼會出現，為什麼會這樣出現？它們可能還會出現得毫無約束，不顧任何社會的基本禮儀和道德。與當下情境毫無關係的記憶畫面也會浮現，我們都不知道此事此地為什麼會想起這些事。方以自己的經驗，希望探討的正是這些我們自己跟自己的對話。

    在來德國兩年之前，方在香港已是一位受到認可、有相當經驗的藝術家。對他而言，來德國讀書，最重要的肯定不是獲取新的資訊和方法，而是對一個陌生環境的體驗，一種距離感和冷漠感，因為孤獨正是方最感興趣的感受之一，他的創作也往往旨在處理及轉化孤獨，以達致對自我的更深刻的理解。從這個角度看，這次展覽的最後一件作品《午後》真可謂是一個美麗的比喻：《午後》是一本沒有文字，不記載任何知識和歷史的書，書中只有陽光的映照，隨著時間轉變形式。這大概象徵了方的藝術創作之要旨：自我對於時間和心靈的最為細緻的感受。

    Exhibition view







    Working Report for Museum Ludwig







    A photo of Flat D



    Passenger Report for Meinfernbus









    Attendance Report for Academy of Media Arts







    Afternoons












    Exhibition Catalogue








  • Flat D, 6/F, Aldrich Garden

    Anthony Yung

    Flat D, 6/F, Aldrich Garden’ is the title of this exhibition but also the artist’s home address. This implies a doubleness: an address is functional and indicative – as a concept, it is most commonly understandable – but at the same time it is also meaningless because it is not meant to help you to find the place, as for the audience of this exhibition it refers to a place so far away that it may as well not exist. Such a conceptual doubleness epitomizes Silas Fong’s artistic project in temporal experiences and psychological activities – things that are utterly personal, yet also entirely common.

    The address is also giving us hints with which to understand the exhibition: first of all, it brings us to Hong Kong. A global financial center built first by manufacturing industries (the predecessor of ‘the world’s factory’), then by financial-trading freedoms, the city likes to evaluate its business and its people in terms of productivity and efficiency. In this society of pragmatism, wasting time is no different to burning billnotes. Growing up here, people pick up an almost ethical obligation to spend time in the ‘correct way’, and for the younger generation to not do so is a major rebellion. With this context in mind, Fong’s works are actually a research on sheer unproductivity, on the moments that we learn to feel guilty and negative about. He questions if these moments really are worthless and whether our personal histories are not in fact constituted within all these ‘ahistorical times’.

    The address also brings us to Flat D, a piece that was first shown in the Hong Kong Art Centre in 2015. There, Fong had taken corner of the exhibition space and reconstructed it into his bedroom at home. He then invited visitors to spend ten minutes in this room. With the time set to precisely 10 minutes, and the fact that there was not anything at all in the room to look at or contemplate, visitors could do nothing but go with whatever came up their minds. Coming inside Flat D, their plans, their experiences of the day were interrupted, though voluntarily, and now they had to stop and think about the interrupted. Eventually, the piece provided an experience and a question: what does this interruption, these ten minutes that are cut out of our life, mean to us?

    Three other pieces within the exhibition (Work Report for Museum Ludwig, Attendance Report for Academy of Media Arts Cologne and Passenger Report for Meinfernbus) can be seen as elements of ‘fieldworks’ relating to such research – with pictures and texts, he documents the activities of his mind during long hours undertaking internship duties in a museum, attending classes and taking long bus rides. These records may remind us of the typical texts of ‘stream of consciousness’, in particular Camus’s Outsider, but literariness is not Fong’s main concern here. What he tries to explore is the common rather than the unique – he wants these records to remind us of our own experiences. Think about it, we all talk to ourselves during moments of boredom and distraction, when in our minds words start to flow randomly, unbounded from social norms (manners, ethics, and so on) and a chain of memories appears, no matter how irrelevant they are to the things immediately surrounding us. Using the artist’s own experiences as case studies, these pieces ask us to pay attention to these conversations we have with ourselves.

    Even two years ago, Fong was already a considerably experienced artist. Coming to ‘study’ in Germany, what is the most precious to him is perhaps not the new information to even methodologies, but the unfamiliar environment, a sense of distance and indifference that provokes thoughts and experiences. For as we can tell from these works, the core theme of Fong’s practice is an inevitable loneliness, and art is a tool to process and transcend it and make us understand ourselves better. In this sense, we may see the last work in this exhibition as a beautiful metaphor – Afternoons (2015) is a series of books, but books with no words, no knowledge, no ‘history’ – just the sunlight that changes as time goes by. It symbolizes what Fong attempts to create with art: a sensitivity to the subtleties of our time and our mind.

    ‘Flat D, 6/F, Aldrich Garden’ is a text written for the exhibition with the same title.

  • Passenger Report for Meinfernbus

    2015 Photo-Text
    Digital Print on papers, wooden shelf
    170 cm x 22 cm  x 16 cm



    Full Text

  • Attendance Report for Academy of Media Arts Cologne

    2015 Photo-Text
    Digital Print on Newspaper
    75 cm x 52 cm, double side, 100 copies to be distributed in Academy of Media Arts Cologne

    Exhibited in
    《Flat D, 6/F, Aldrich Garden》CASE – Project Room of Photography, Academy of Media Arts Cologne, 2015

    藝術學院出席報告
    2015 相片 – 文字
    報紙上數碼印刷
    75厘米 x 52 厘米, 相片, 印製100份於科隆媒體藝術學院派發

    展覽
    《愛蝶灣6樓D室》科隆媒體藝術學院攝影項目空間, 2015

    Attendance-report-for-khm_2015-06-16_outline_noframe attendancereport_2


    At the main entrance of Academy of Media Arts during Open Day (Rundgang)


    At the library of the Academy of Media Arts with other newspaper.

    or
    Digital Print
    82 cm x 62 cm, in gold matte aluminum frame
    或
    數碼印刷
    82 厘米 x 62 厘米, 金色磨砂鋁框


     

    Full Text

  • Flat D

    Download PDF
    2015 Durational Installation
    Table, grey plastic tray, watch, attendant in formal wear, wooden door, soundproof walls and ceiling, laminate flooring, wall skirting, aluminum window with sanded glass, air-conditioner, wall paint, steel wall hanger, curtain, light bulb, kinetic light system
    300 cm x 220 cm x 250 cm, 10 minutes

    In front of a door, there is a person sitting on a chair. When you get close, this person greets you and asks if you want to enter. However, you are only allowed to enter individually, without your mobile phone, camera, electronic devices and books, etc. After you enter, the door would be locked, and it would only be unlock after 10 minutes. You would sign an agreement to confirm your decision at your own risk. Inquiries about what is behind the door would not be answered. Every visitor is only allowed to enter the door once for the whole exhibition period.

    There is overwhelming information all around that numbs our senses. We are constantly forced to fool our basic observation of our daily life surroundings. In urban city life like Hong Kong, it’s almost impossible to be alone. We are always occupied and distracted. With mobile communications, it gets even “better”. That actually hinders us to understand ourselves and our needs. It is believed by many and even proved that, indulge in boredom helps creativity. This work tries to offer a solitary meditative experience which is free from social pressure and provide guidance to inner exploration.

    Exhibited in
    《The 20th ifva Awards – Media Art Category Finalist Exhibition》
    Pao Galleries Hong Kong Art Centre, Hong Kong, 2015
    IMG_7323
    An attendant sits next to the entrance of Flat D to control the operation.

    IMG_7334
    A grey tray is used for visitors to leave their belongings (mobile phone, camera, watch and etc.).

    IMG_7351
    Visitors are obliged to read the agreement carefully before entering Flat D. A watch is used for the attendant to keep time.

    IMG_7411
    The attendant locks the door after the visitor has entered Flat D.

    6
    Light from outside the window scatters on the wall and the floor. It changes slowly across the room.

    57 8 9
    Air conditioner creates an atmosphere with ambient mechanical sound, temperature and humidity.

    10
    Sometimes the room turns darker.

    11 12 13 14 15

    Instructional/Documentation Video

  • Afternoons

    Download PDF
    2015
    Digital Print on Neobond® Synthetic Fibre Papers
    A Series of 20 books of different number pages
    in A5 format in light-tight photo paper bags
    Wooden shelf, 88 cm x 50 cm x 32 cm

    Afternoon I
    DSC_1213


    Flipping through the book.

    Afternoon II
    DSC_1245_600


    Flipping through the book.

    Exhibited in
    《after/image》Pure Art Foundation, Hong Kong, 2015
     DSC07424 DSC07434 DSC07436 DSC07426 DSC07431 DSC07432
    Photos taken by Ko Sin Tung

  • The Work Report for Museum Ludwig

    2014 Photo-Text
    Lambda Print on aluminium Dibond in frame
    155.5 cm x 38 cm x 3.6 cm (Two in a set)

    In April 2014, I managed to get a part-time job. I was excited but nervous. It was to work as a performer in Museum Ludwig. I had to dress formal and look decent. So I bought a suit. On the opening day, the artist guided three of us, the ‘name announcers’, by himself. We had to stand at an exact position at the exhibition entrance. We had to ask every visitor for their names and then announce them really loudly into the exhibition space. The job was in shift-based. Each shift lasted for 4 hours. I worked 4 shifts a week.

    At the beginning, it was not easy, especially when I wore a watch. I thought 30 minutes passed, but when I look at my 40-year-old mechanical watch, the minute hand just turned by 30 degrees. In order to kill boredom, I counted how many spotlights are there on the ceiling; how large the space is by counting the number of tiles. I tried different strategies of taking breaks, every 5 minutes for 30 minutes or every 10 minutes per hour, to make things feel faster. I watched the daylight change on the wall. I imagine how the weather changed outside, and how the tourists took photos of Dom.

    Another colleague asked me another day, ‘How do you feel standing 4 hours straight?” ‘I don’t feel anything anymore. I just look at the white wall’, I smiled.

    Exhibited in
    《Alle berichten darüber: Dokumentarische Fotografie》
    CASE – Project room of Photography, Academy of Media Arts Cologne, 2014

    藝術館工作報告
    2014- 照片-文字
    鋁塑複合板上能達打印
    155.5 厘米 x 38 厘米 x 3.6 厘米 (一組兩件)

    2014年4月, 我終找到一份兼職工作。當時我既興奮又緊張。這份工是在科隆一間著名藝術館內擔任一名表演員。衣着方面要求整齊及得體，所以我特地買了一套西裝。展覽開幕當日，藝術家親自指導我們這三位〈報名員〉。工作期間我必須站在展覽入口的同一位置。我詢問每位觀眾的姓名，隨即大聲向展覽方向宣讀出來。這份工是輪班制的。每班四小時，一星期四班。

    有一天，同事問我：「站着4小時不休息的感覺怎樣？」
    「我己經沒甚麼感覺了。我只是看着白牆。」我微笑說。

    展覽
    《alle berichten darüber》 – 紀錄攝影展,德國科隆媒體藝術學院CASE攝影項目空間 2014



    Below are the excerpts of the work from 22 June 2014

    ludwig-website-1 ludwig-website-2 ludwig-website-3ludwig-website-4

    Full Text

  • Writing to reach you

    Collaborative work with Wendy Ng
    By I’m almost there. 幾乎做了
    – An artist met a designer (or the other way round) for almost a year. Through their struggles and misunderstandings in communication, they felt the need to express their contradictory thoughts and awaited for the unexpected agreements.

    2011 Spray paint, wall paint, wood, digital Video

    Every day we write to each other, but what we know of us? I tell you ‘I’m thinking of you’ in all sort of ways, do you weigh the message same as I? The group I’m almost there. is taking this chance to bring awareness on the topic of mobile communication technology and its impact to us. Technology has the power to shape or construct our interpersonal relationships, yet the realisations on some of us are uncertain. How much effect do we actually pay to reach out for a person or to a society? It is believed that the quantity of communication offered by technology does not reflect its quality, while the perception and the necessity of communication technology is yet to define…

    I’m almost there    . would try to provide alternative perspectives on the consumption of intangible commodity.

    Exhibited in
    《Detour 2011: Useless》Former Married Police Quarter, Central, Hong Kong


    Exhibition overview


    Viewing Area – The best spot for the imaginary exhibition


    Imaginary projection screen with specification


    QR code for accessing an online image of projection screen


    Imaginary working table with specification and QR code to access an online image of it


    Guided description of the imaginary exhibition and user manual for accessing the online video works


    Video stills