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EVENT DESCRIPTION
‘Ambiguous Spaces’ features 14 new works by local artist Elpis Chow. Using painting as her chief medium of creation, Chow is an adept observer of urban spaces and corners who reconstructs regular lines and colours in architecture, representing another real space on the pictorial surface. Chow’s works depict the odd sides of Hong Kong cityscape, sites frequented yet very often neglected, such as street corners, buildings, corridors in housing estates and ramps, evoking a visual contrast that is at once familiar and strange.
In the scenes depicted in the new works can be found real or fictitious creatures, forming a collection of the artist’s favourite species and in a certain sense, her personal bestiary of imaginary beings. Circumventing real life circumstances that do not allow the satisfaction of her desire to collect, Chow selects interesting elements from her biological image database made up of animal documentaries, daily snapshots, internet images, etc., collaging them onto imagined scenes with a computer software.
After transferring the black and white sketches onto the canvas, Chow then fills them with vivid colours. Chiaroscuro is represented by layers of different shades of the same colour scheme, dark outlines and neat composition all point to a flatness that belongs to illustration, with a hint of the Pop Art or the Superflat aesthetics. In addition to juxtaposing specific creatures and sites, the new works demonstrate a continued colour experiment, bringing the fantastic images towards a realm bordering on the surreal, reminding us once again of the fictional nature of the works.
