CHENG Ting Ting: Night Walk

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Gallery EXIT presents CHENG Ting Ting’s latest solo exhibition ‘Night Walk’, showcasing the artist’s new works created in the year since her return to Hong Kong after graduating from a master’s degree in Norway in 2021. During her two years of studying abroad in Norway, the artist experienced an environment, climate, and general atmosphere of life and creation entirely different from that in Hong Kong. The immense difference between the two places has caused a considerable impact on and transformation in Cheng’s creation. The relatively slow pace of life and creation in Norway allowed the artist to freely explore different directions and techniques of painting.

Cheng’s works always unfold with chaotic brushstrokes and colour blocks, followed by the construction of interactions and interconnections between layers. In her previous works, viewers can identify certain things and narratives, while her new works tend to present a sense of general confusion, like the parts or afterimages of things. The paintings have been washed and painted over, until only some vaguely familiar silhouettes remain. Colours blend together, and underneath, details of the scene are hidden within the complex and chaotic brushstrokes, barely glimpsed by the viewer.

Cheng’s sojourn in Norway has made her more sensitive to the luminosity and colour tones around her. One factor is Norway’s extreme daylight hours, with short days in winter and more than three times as much sunlight in summer. The artist recalls when she first returned to Hong Kong, as she stepped out of the hotel where she had been quarantined for twenty-one days, her first reaction was: ‘It’s so bright.’ The indoor lighting of the hotel room was essentially different from the outdoor sunlight. She feels that she can even sense the difference in colour temperature. For instance, the daylight of the city of Bergen in Norway where she lived, probably due to its mostly overcast and rainy climate, is a kind of blueish green. The two years living in Norway had made the artist sensitive to light, and she hopes to manifest in the exhibition space and her paintings this emphasis of natural light environment, the textures of light and its subtle changes.

Norway’s long winters mean that life is mostly lived indoors. This also leads to a tendency of the local people to value introspection and solitude. Gradually Cheng also got used to being alone in a quiet environment for an extended period of time, and through careful observation of newly acquired habits, she attempted to understand those details yet to be unravelled. Slowly, the artist became aware of the similarity between her usual painting practice, and the repetitive tasks and simple hand movements, activities of a repetitive nature such as printmaking, sewing, dyeing and writing. Like origami, which is to fold a crease into the paper, forming it into some object, an envelope or a greeting card. These simple and pure actions, are similar to the process of filtration, revealing the fundamentals of these observations little by little.

Cheng believes that her creative direction is inherently fluid, her works change in response to the different environments she inhabits; accumulated personal experiences and her current state in turn lead to changes in her creations. In the face of the interconnection and influence between various factors, Cheng adopts a relatively passive attitude, like a bystander who witnesses the transformation of things. The unceasing creative action of the artist and its essence of process is no different from the engagement in physical exercise. While repeated actions may seem devoid of meaning, little by little they affect the inner workings and habits of both body and mind. Through the interaction with brushstrokes and materials, the artist slowly pieces together some accumulated and elusive thoughts.

The creative trajectory of this exhibition apparently re-enacts the artist’s late night experience in Bergen. During one late night in her first winter there, as she was about to head home and upon finding that there was no more public transport running from the city centre to where she lived, she resorted to walking, following the light rail tracks, bracing the cold and fatigue, staggering forward amidst strange neighbourhoods. After walking for nearly four hours, she spotted a light decoration on a balcony from afar, and recognising it as something she usually saw from home, she knew that she was finally close to home. The moment upon reaching home, she curled up and fell into an exhausted slumber.

It was only when Cheng has nearly completed most of the paintings that she became aware of the connection between that particular late night experience and her own creation. In addition to being an unforgettable experience, it was also a process of adapting to various changes, including those of the self and the transient world at large. The projections of various ineffable emotions and anxieties can only be unravelled and slowly emerge through repeated creative processes. Like the association of that late night experience, artistic creation is a process of memory reconstruction in hindsight.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

CHENG Ting Ting (b. 1990, Hong Kong), completed her MA in Fine Arts from Art Academy, Department of Contemporary Art, the University of Bergen in 2021, and graduated in BA from Academy Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University in 2013. Cheng believes that her creative direction is inherently fluid, her works change in response to the different environments she inhabits; accumulated personal experiences and her current state in turn lead to changes in her creations. Her works unfold with chaotic brushstrokes and colour blocks, followed by the construction of interactions and interconnections between layers. Participated exhibitions include solo exhibitions “Overnight TV” (Møllendalsveien 61, Bergen, 2019​), “Recipient Absent” (Gallery EXIT, Hong Kong, 2019), “Enfante” (chi K11 art space, Hong Kong, 2017), “Fall In Fall Out” (Gallery EXIT, Hong Kong, 2017), “The Pendulant Mass” (Galerie Ovo, Taipei, 2016) and group exhibitions “a little larger than the entire universe” (Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, 2021), “Takeover” (Galleri FI4E, Bergen, 2021), “Very Natural Actions“ (Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong, 2019), “A Tree Fell in the Forest, and No One’s There” (Power Station of Art, Shanghai, 2018), “Hi! Houses’ Art Exhibition” (Dr Sun Yet-sun Museum, Hong Kong, 2016). CHENG currently lives and works in Hong Kong

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