Romancing Relevance

EVENT DESCRIPTION

WOAW Gallery is pleased to present Romancing Relevance, a thematic group exhibition curated by Kevin Poon, celebrating an unfettered exploration of imagination, featuring works by Brian Calvin, Jake Clark, Sean Gannon, Evgen Čopi Gorišek, Baldur Hegalson, Monika Karandi, Laure Mary-Couégnias, Zoe McGuire, Keita Morimoto, Charlie Roberts, and Trude Viken. The exhibition is on view from March 31 to April 14, in 9 Queen’s Road Central, Hong Kong.

It is said that desire populates the space between artists and their work. Fixated on a subject — a memory, a taste, a sensation — the artist transforms raw material into objects of the world. In other words, this desire catalyses artists to continually experiment and transgress the boundaries set up by their predecessors. In pursuit of the sublime, the writers and artists of Romanticism, the literary and artistic movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th Century, expanded upon notions of myth-making, landscape, nature, and the melancholia.

A nod to the Romantics, Romancing Relevance brings together a group of artists who share an obsession with paint and its possibilities. By challenging the bounds of their imagination, the artists court the contemporary as a site of transfiguration and transformation, offering up new possibilities for the painterly surface.

Traversing the land of dreams and mountains, Zoe McGuire, Monika Karandi, and Laure Mary-Couégnias transform paint into mysticism and fables. Preoccupied with contorting memory and representation, Trude Viken and Brian Calvin deform and reform themselves through self-portraiture. Meanwhile, Evgen Čopi Gorišek and Baldur Hegalson disfigure bodies and faces, rendering them into mutable containers of the psyche. A reflection on consumer culture and its contents, the works of Sean Gannon and Jake Clark open up a light-hearted space of reflection. Citing the Dutch Golden Age and perspective painting, respectively, Keita Morimoto and Charlie Roberts offer enigmatic snippets that capture the interiority of the contemporary.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

Kevin Poon approaches culture, lifestyle, and business as a unified artistic whole. Active in roles from curating, design to DJ-ing, he is the consummate networked creative figure, acting as a hub and a filter through his many entrepreneurial and artistic projects. With a sense of humor and a critical eye across the worlds of art, fashion, hospitality and business, Poon is an entrepreneur & cultural influencer.

Woaw Gallery is a contemporary gallery established by Kevin Poon in 2019. Across 3 locations between Hong Kong and Beijing, the gallery introduces a wide variety of artworks by established & emerging artists around the globe with a fresh perspective and translate them for the Asia Market.
Woaw Gallery has previously produced and hosted exhibitions and group shows that feature a wide variety of artists including Allison Zuckerman, Anna Weyant, Charlie Roberts, Cristina Banban, Grant Levy-Lucero, Koichi Sato, Simphiwe Ndzube, Sam Friedman, Sun Woo and Tide as well as product launches for KAWS and editions with Case Studyo