Capsule is pleased to present a three-person exhibition by artists Leelee Chan (b. 1984, Hong Kong), Chris Oh (b. 1982, Oregon) and Cai Zebin (b. 1988, Shantou) at Liste Art Fair Basel 2024. Inlaid with objects and images from the history of art, nature and human society, the paintings and sculptures interwind transience and immortality to inspire an alternative perception of time, and weave a contemporary narrative through the lens of history.
Leelee Chan’s latest wall-mounted sculpture, Ode to Hilma, is a tribute to Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), and a testament to the late artist’s inspiring courage in capturing the present moment by merging elements from the past through the future. Af Klint fused complex ideas and belief systems - from nature, religion, and language, to folk, art, science, and the occult - into a radical visual vocabulary of symbols, geometric shapes, ambiguous life forms, and representational motifs. Inspired by Af Klint’s visionary paintings that have been described as “a form of time traveler”, Chan’s sculpture conveys an elasticity of temporality and an openness to connect by reincarnating objects with new meanings, purposes and value. Through her fusion of architectural and biomorphic forms, urban detritus and organic materials, natural and manipulated surfaces, she embarks on a search on how to materialize life force through the process of making.
Chan’s small sculptures from her on-going series “Present Relics” juxtapose organic materials and contemporary readymade objects, with mingqi fragments (ancient Chinese burial objects) of pottery figurines dating from the 4th to 10th centuries AD. Chan’s idiosyncratic assemblies take us on a journey through time and her personal history, revisiting her childhood upbringing in her parents’ antique shop in Hong Kong, where she observed and practiced the connoisseurship and restoration of historic debris. By integrating materials from ambiguous sources – from ancient artifacts made by unknown craftspeople and seashells scavenged by the artist to urban detritus and industrial materials spurned out from the global supply chain – Leelee Chan probes into the physical composition of the world we live in and concocts the poetry underneath the material surface. Presented on an organic form multilevel plinth, the sculptures conjure a sense of wonderment and exploration like relics unearthed from land formations.
Adjacent to Chan’s tabletop sculptures, in the center of the booth sits another plinth that presents the delicate works by Chris Oh. Appropriating Northern Renaissance paintings on organic materials that each signifies a unique life cycle, such as seashells, emu eggs, geodes and burl slabs, Oh revives figures and scenes from the past to rekindle sparks of human emotions that transcend times and circumstances. The close-up of Archangel Gabriel in Ripples (2024) – originally depicted in Flemish master Jan van Eyck’s painting Annunciation (1434 – 1436) – emerges from the iridescent surface of a seashell, commemorating the blissful moment when the Archangel announces to the Virgin Mary that she will bear the son of God. In Cella (2024), a geode cradles the figure of Mary Magdalen, originating from 15th-century Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden’s painting Pietà (c. 1441). The spathic texture sprawls onto Mary Magdalene’s face; geological life cycle of the earth hereby overlaps with the history of human society, creating a timeless resonation of lamentation and compassion. In Oh’s work, the portrayed faces, gestures and landscapes emerge from natural objects like totems imprinted on relics, shimmering in an aura of time and mystique.
Echoing Chris Oh’s Renaissance phantoms, Cai Zebin’s painting harkens back to the lineage of surrealism, and delves into art history’s time-honored subjects to reveal Cai’s first-hand experience of being a modern-day painter. Fictional Image - Ichthyic Magician (Manuscript) (2023) pays homage to Romanian artist Victor Brauner’s (1903 – 1966) and Swiss-German painter Paul Klee’s (1879 – 1940) works that depict the motif of the fish while reflecting Cai’s contemplation on the subject of “the conjurer” amidst the seaside town where he lives. Confusion at Midnight 3 (Manuscript) (2023) is a whimsical reinterpretation of the Headless Horseman, whereas The Burned-Out Portrait (Manuscript) (2023) is a psychological portrait of us all who, at one point or another, felt powerless in the face of life’s fragility, or simply collapsed at the end of the day, letting termites swarm through an open window. The works offer a glimpse into the artist’s personal and professional lives, and open dialogues between the contemporary painter and his great predecessors across time and space.
