Installation view of "Rendering," Property Holdings Development Group, Hong Kong, 2022. Photo by Zed Leets.
RENDERING
Installation view of "Rendering," Property Holdings Development Group, Hong Kong, 2022. Photo by Zed Leets.
In computing and architectural terms, a render is a future ghost. Used to imagine parks, housing, even cities, these mock-ups fill in liminal spaces, their speculative form a fixed impression—however fleeting—of indeterminable conditions.
Yet the process of rendering is more active. It percolates and boils at the surface of our present observations; it picks at our perceptions. Rendering is palimpsestic practice: a wall, a text, a canvas is partially scraped or washed off, primed for direct, new markings or ways of seeing. It is also a language of reproduction, borrowed by artists and musicians who deviate, however minimally, from those who came before. To render is to extract, to distill—to drain an animal of its fat—but it is also to cover and construct, as in a solid wall or boundary. A rendering is a voice from the offing in the now, a mortal examination of future conditions.
We invite you to explore “Rendering,” the inaugural exhibition of Property Holdings Development Group. Situated in a former 1970s clubhouse that has been adapted by Beau Architects, the gallery reveals works by 11 artists with developing relationships to the gallery: Michele Chu, Dylan DeRose, Christopher K. Ho, Lee Eunsae, Xin Liu, Luo Jr-Shin, Zheng Mahler, Yuko Mohri, Sasaoka Yuriko, Virtue Village, and Wong Kit Yi.
Measurements of time, the female body, and mortality in flux are imprinted in Michele Chu's Winter, a self-portrait cyanotype prepared and hand-dyed with tea by the artist.
Michele Chu
Winter
2021
Toned cyanotype
174 x 183.5 cm
Luo Jr-Shin
in Budding, in Blooming, in Withering
2017
Metal, mirror, pigment print, scented soap, glass vase, flower
80 x 50 x 15 cm
Luo Jr-Shin's elegy to the AIDS epidemic that raged in the 1980s and '90s, these altars of memory contort public and private narrative, reflecting on conflicting portrayals of the queer community while viewers witness fresh flowers blooming, withering, and fading.
Inside an oversize polished locket lies a self-portrait: a conflicting scene of love, merging references to nonbinary hanfu figures, transhuman fetishism, and radical monogamy by the artist duo Virtue Village.
Virtue Village
Talisman for Radical Monogamy™️
2022
Fiberglass, stainless steel, oil on canvas
100 x 50 x 10cm
Yuko Mohri
Decomposition (For Hong Kong)
2021
Apple, seasonal fruits, wooden dish, computer, audio amplifier, speaker
Dimensions variable
A ceremonial melon, some oranges for guests, a dragon fruit: these objects of domestic invitation come alive in Yuko Mohri's sonic Decomposition (For Hong Kong) via a system that measures and interprets the moisture levels in each fruit. These interpretations become lines of music; songs that make visible the qualities that we cannot see.
Christopher K. Ho
Tabletop Sculpture
2022
Brass and aluminum
16.5 x 16.5 x 55.2 cm
Similarities between Finland and Hong Kong's socio-political history foregrounds this formal sculpture by Christopher K. Ho, in which abstracted shapes play with the conventions of fixed objects and narratives.
On Lantau, water buffaloes are being displaced by land developers. In their most recent project, Zheng Mahler took field recordings of these indigenous species. Inaudible to the human ear—buffalos can hear up to 40,000hz—these sounds are traced visible on these surfaces, an attempt to understand each other.
Zheng Mahler
Residues I (Bubalus bubalis 16-40,000Hz)
2022
Laser etching on acrylic, LED strip, arduinos, buddha box
80 x 60cm
Lee Eunsae
Two
2020
Oil on canvas
91 x 72.7 cm
Within Lee Eunsae's painting, Two, a thin web of intimacy suspends between the viewer and subjects: are we looking in, or intruding on a moment of privacy?
Dylan DeRose
Piperlane-annex
2019
Paint, vermiculated substrate
76.2 x 57.15 x 6.3 cm
These sculptural forms reference a Victorian-era domestic ornamentation which mimic surfaces eaten away by worms; here, DeRose invites and then removes vermin from these structures as a critical gesture of systemic gentrification.
Installation view of Potato Yellow Baby (Xin Liu and Lucia Monge) and Piperlane-annex (Dylan DeRose). Photo by Zed Leets.
A spaceship not for humans, but for potatoes: a commentary on rhizomic space exploration as a critique of colonial practices and repopulation ideology by Xin Liu and Lucia Monge.
Xin Liu
2021-11-07-00-42-24-UTC_NOAA-19
2022
UV prints on hairline stainless steel
36 x 21 cm
These surfaces reveal the image signals of decommissioned satellites, still floating in space but no longer in use. Received by Xin Liu through the use of a broomstick and a coat hanger wire, each image is captured over the fifteen minutes when a satellite is directly overhead.
Sasaoka Yuriko
Icarus's Bride (still)
2015-2016
Video with color and sound: 7 min 43 sec
What happened after Icarus died? Video and theater artist Sasaoka Yuriko reimagines the afterlife of the young man who flew too close to the sun, equating the narrative of the Greek myth with the Kamikaze pilots of World War II, and the patriarchal forces that forced a system of sacrifice.
Sasaoka Yuriko
Yoriko
2021
Crayon, thread, canvas
60 × 30 cm
Sasaoka Yuriko
Icarus
2021
Crayon, thread, canvas
60 × 30 cm
Wong Kit Yi
Dear John,
2021-22
Video with color and sound: 15 min 54 sec
Created and performed at the artist's wedding in 2021, Dear John, is a karaoke lecture performance by Wong Kit Yi that engages with the history of marriage, Marcel Duchamp, and time, and is the first in a series exploring the epistolary format.