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EVENT DESCRIPTION
Flowers Gallery is pleased to announce Lau Hiu Tung’s first solo exhibition with Flowers Gallery, Hong Kong. The title I am in training, don’t kiss me is borrowed from the iconic 1927 self-portrait by French surrealist photographer Claude Cahun, reflecting Lau’s exploration of gender tropes and representations.
During the exhibition, the gallery space functions as a ‘gymnasium’, where the artist presents her gym-inspired practices daily. Within this transformed space, Lau explores the subject matter of the body and identity in association with the culture of the modern gym, through mediums of painting, sculpture, and performance.
Lau says, “Through exercise I find a deeper connection with myself and my body. It is in the pain and hurt I find my own voice, and I get to respond with paint and other materials.”
The word ‘gymnasium’ derives from the ancient Greek word ‘gymos’, meaning naked. Lau considers the modern-day gym a significant social and therapeutic place, facilitating obsessions with representations of the body. Lau refers to Mark Greif’s description of the gym in his book Against Everything as resembling “a voluntary hospital”, creating situations within her practice in which healing and wellness are consciously embedded.
Found objects and terms used in the gym are all part of Lau’s inspiration. In the performance work EMOM (2022), the performer works on his muscles in front of a mirror, and runs up and down a slope within 60 seconds, using the EMOM workout acronym to suggest action happening ‘every minute on the minute’.
Wall of Isolation Exercises (2022) is a wall-mounted arrangement of small paintings and assemblages. In Lau’s paintings, simple shapes and colours carry layers of desire and complexity. Her canvases evoke sensual emotions, just as the titles of works are often poetic and metaphorical, unfolding a series of short and provocative stories. Midnight Love (2022), a painting inspired by the scenery of a midnight hike, is composed with scores of orange dots – a departure from Lau’s usual painterly approach, which is often characterised by minimal, expressive lines and shapes. These marks suggest flickering stars amidst the dark and quiet landscape, which, on closer inspection, reveals the shape of a body.
The exhibition extends into the back alley, with The Spirit of Tablets (2022), an installation shaped as a memorial tablet with a found photograph of Claude Cahun’s I am in training, don’t kiss me.
