We are pleased to announce Leelee Chan's participation in "Joan Miró – The Poetry of Everyday Life“ at Hong Kong Museum of Art. The exhibition opens on March 3rd, 2023, and will last until July 2nd, 2023.
Originally trained in painting, Leelee Chan (b. 1984) ventured into sculpture to expand the possibilities of abstraction. In Untitled (2023), she builds on her Pallets in Repose series (2019-2022) to continue her exploration of Hong Kong’s built environment and contemporary material culture through the assemblage of manufactured by-products, construction materials, and ancient mineral. In particular, plastic shipping pallets have been a consistent motif in Chan’s sculptural practice. Found in Hong Kong, this mass-produced equipment embodies both the city’s socio-economic development as an international port and the artist’s own fascination with the circulation of the global supply chain since her childhood overlooking the container port in Kwai Tsing.
In this installation, multiple plastic pallets are arranged into a pair of architectural fittings. The arched wall mount inlaid with amber resin and golden obsidian echoes the form and radiance of stained-glass windows, whereas the crater in the floor piece inlaid with stainless steel mirror, yellow zinc wheel, and bronze flowers resembles an open-pit mine. Mirroring and reflecting off each other, both structures evoke different types of manmade construction revealing humanity’s insatiable desire for material extraction in the name of progress, whether sacred or secular. The obsidian inlays crafted in the Sierra de las Navajas mountainous region in Hidalgo, Mexico, where volcanic glass has been mined since the ancient Teotihuacan civilizations (100 BCE – 550 CE), are especially symbolic for this ancient material once known as ‘steel of the New World’ has been extracted across time for various utilitarian and spiritual purposes. By integrating this enduring yet finite resource into the plastic pallets, the artist transforms disposable manufactured equipment into unique artefacts suspended in time, challenging the incessant acceleration and homogeneity of the global supply chain. Chan’s labour-intensive and time-consuming sculptural process also subverts the mechanical automation of capitalist production, echoing Joan Miró’s defiance of traditional aesthetics and the commodification of art in his rejection of painting for sensual handcrafted assemblage sculptures.
March 3, 2023
