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EVENT DESCRIPTION
In a modestly sized studio in Fo Tan, a couple works by side by side. By the window, there are paintings by Hong Kong artist Sarah Lai, who engages with image and popular culture in her scenographic recreations of space. Near the door, one finds research materials and sculptures by the US-born Samuel Swope, revealing preoccupations with machines, drones, and flight. These practices, conceived in parallel from a shared studio and over a 19-year relationship, are shown together for the first time in “Sarah & Samuel”—an exhibition that is not a duo exhibition, but an exhibition about being a duo.
Familiar older works from Lai and Swope’s oeuvre are reconfigured across the exhibition space. A contrapuntal entanglement emerges, with the principal theme of latent tension, or concealment, that playfully hints at the couple’s subtle influences on each other. In Lai’s paintings, scenes from the 1986 Hong Kong film A Better Tomorrow are juxtaposed with Tender Trap (2018-25), a nude female veiled within an amber case. Meanwhile, Swope’s works toggle between dormancy and movement. A tire wheel, suspended from the ceiling via an airplane ratchet strap, hints at imminent movement like a performer awaiting instruction, and an archival print shows a drone in mid-flight blur.
Augmenting these older works are two new collaborative pieces which articulate the languages of exchange between partners. In the multi-component installation Sarah (2025), retrofitted audio devices emit a voice recording of Swope repeatedly calling Lai’s name. Scaling a range of emotions—ecstatic, anxious, mischievous, pensive—the vocal recall wraps around the exhibition, generating space for curiosity. Why doesn’t she answer? Is she there? Reflecting the non-verbal elements of a relationship, Lai’s response instead takes the form of selected physical hosts for Swope’s voice, among them a talking bird ornament and a cassette tape player. One particularly sentimental object, a vintage alarm clock of a redhead basketball player from the popular anime Slam Dunk, was chosen for its resemblance to Swope and a similar clock Lai possessed as a teenager, dovetailing personal and shared memory.
