852 GHOST-JPG

EVENT DESCRIPTION

At 11:11am on Saturday, March 23, the Hong Kong artist Wong Kit Yi will open her first solo show at PHD Group, “+852 GHOST-JPG.” Featuring a new major video work Dial 432 to See the Light (2022-24), created during and after her residency at The Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, the exhibition explores extraterrestrial presence, spectral lights, the third eye, and ghost images through surrealist furniture pieces, screen paintings, and bagpipe objects.

As a special opening event, the gallery will be open from 11:11am to 11:11pm every day from March 25 to March 30. Additionally, there will be daily performances featuring the artist and a group of invited curators, artists, and friends, reciting the “lyrics” from Wong Kit Yi’s video work (times below). Visitors can make an appointment via PHD Group’s website or by calling/Whatsapping our special hotline at +852 5943 7541.

We invite you to explore Wong Kit Yi’s exhibition that week, and encourage you to bring any international visitors and friends to the gallery as well. We will be serving drinks in the Study, and all are welcome join us in the collective karaoke lecture performance choir.

Driving along Route 90 in Marfa, Texas, spectators have for many years reported seeing strange lights in the sky. Known as the Marfa Lights, or Marfa Ghost Lights, the phenomenon has birthed dozens of conspiracy theories, from benevolent aliens and oracular spirits to car reflections and static electricity in the arid deserts.

In 2022, Hong Kong artist Wong Kit Yi embarked on a residency at The Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, where she discovered the Marfa Lights while researching the archives of Donald Judd. Looking at Judd’s freestanding sculptures and his collection of bagpipe recordings within Marfa’s drifting sands and lights, the artist began to dig into the layers of the paranormal, intrigued by the relationship between the visible and invisible, and the tangible and intangible spaces that surround us.

“+852 GHOST-JPG” is at once a reference to the nostalgic act of dialing in—the “+852” a reference to Hong Kong’s area code—and Wong’s explorations into other realms. Challenging Brakhage’s “eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective,” the artist moves toward the paranormal layers that make up our visual experience, upending ideas of the earthly and the singular. In blurring the lines between historical, earth-bound truths and spiritual, collective speculations, Wong investigates instabilities around our perceived realities through an expanded cinema installation, two new videos, and sculptural objects.

Performance schedule

Daily performances featuring Wong Kit Yi, Wang Tuo, Yuk King Tan, Isabella Tam, Sissi Kaplan, and many more special guests!

Monday 25 Mar | 4:32pm

Tuesday 26 Mar | 8:52pm

Wednesday 27 Mar | 8:52pm

Thursday 28 Mar | 4:32pm

Friday 29 Mar | 4:32pm

Saturday 30 Mar | 8:52pm

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

Wong Kit Yi (b.1983) works at the intersection of speculative imagination and research. Merging video with performance and the everyday, she crafts participatory experiences that engender questions of identity, the parameters of time, and context. In her relational karaoke-lecture-performances, she moves fluidly between the voices of academia, memoir, philosophy, and pop song, aggregating content from her research.

She has performed and shown work at Tate Modern (London); Queens Museum (New York); Para Site (Hong Kong); Tai Kwun Contemporary (Hong Kong); and the San Francisco Art Institute (San Francisco). She has participated in FRONT Triennial, Cleveland (2022) and The Arctic Circle expeditionary residency (2015) and was a 2021-22 artist-in-residence at the Chinati Foundation. Her work has been collected by M+ Museum (Hong Kong) and Kadist Art Foundation (Paris/San Francisco).