Udatsu Sushi Hong Kong is pleased to announce the solo exhibition of Hong Kong-based artist Leung Lai-man, Jess. The exhibition features eight of the artist's most recent works on silk.
In 1150, court painter Su Hanchen of the Song Dynasty created Children Playing in an Autumn Garden, which depicts two children—a girl and a younger boy—playing within a palace garden. Both children, with expensive clothing and ornaments, against an abundance of toys and blooming flowers, seem utterly absorbed in the jujube fruits spinning game. The delightful painting is often described as emblematic of a shift in Chinese art, where people other than wealthy Chinese men were allowed to "take centre stage in the world of art and are presented to us as fully individualized human beings". Could Su have known a study of the painting continues to celebrate the purest form of joy human beings (perhaps—several centuries later—more socially and technologically advanced) created simply by playing? With brilliant gongbi brushwork and a delicate colour scheme, artist Leung Lai-man strips away the exuberant garden scenery, focusing on the children’s delightful attentiveness and playfulness in Study of “Children Playing in a Garden in Autumn” (detail). The work invites the viewer to experience the pure, innocent happiness captured through total immersion in the present moment.
The juxtaposition of Study of “Lady holding a fan” by Ren Xiong and Laibie presents Leung’s deeper exploration of joy and delights through women's fashion. Across time and space, societies repeatedly request women to be constantly dressed. Women, often through formal wear, gather enormous transformative power and reveal the clothing as an extension of their true emotions. The works detail both ladies’ complex yet graceful layered dresses and elaborate headwear and accessories with intricate strata of colours and strokes, revealing the unconscious blissfulness and collective female grace take symbolic form under the extravagant frocks. Works Pick/Play: Ten and four pieces from the artist’s Dolly Land x Blind Box series are also on view.