It is hard to believe that twenty years have flown by since I first met Sio Kit. We were classmates at the Academy of Fine Arts. Although we now live in different cities, growing up in former colonies has imbued us with a shared aesthetic sensibility. The first time I encountered his work was his graduation piece in 2006—close-up portraits of the facades and roofs of colorful European-style buildings. It inherited that calm, detached gaze toward everyday scenery reminiscent of the Spanish master Antonio López García.

Throughout seven years of rigorous training at the academy, the spirit of grand xieyi (freehand expression)—which emphasizes brushstrokes and material texture—was deeply imprinted into his creative DNA. Returning after graduation to Macao, a city that is leisurely and poetic yet saddled with a monolithic economy, persisting as a full-time artist has been no easy feat. For the past twenty years, he has faced his canvases and drawing boards in low-profile silence, using this identity to resist his environment, allowing his style to evolve through several stages born of unremitting focus.

There was a time when he used large areas of pastel grays to capture the resonance between potted plants and vines on old rooftops; later, the glimmer of forests and the sea of clouds on mountains satisfied his desire for bold, expansive strokes on canvas. Ultimately, the boundless diamond grids brought him back to the hand-painted floor tiles that had captured his gaze since childhood, becoming the grounding element of his artistic style. The "Elapse" series featured in this exhibition—a project he has cultivated for over a decade—heralds a fresh experimentation with mediums. He wraps 10 x 10 cm paintings onto three-dimensional cubic matrices with units of cubes. This marks a departure from his previous installations, which traversed the site according to the architecture of the exhibition hall. The former serves as an extension of painting into outer space, while the latter cuts and purifies the existence of inner space through two-dimensional works. Within a restrained palette of grays and browns, the collaging of inner and outer spaces intertwines, sublimating into a "gesture" that both carries the traces of time in this small city and encapsulates the movement of his brushwork.

Through the dissolution of forms, Sio Kit transforms collective childhood memories into a visual manifestation of physical space. It freezes the artist's aesthetic reflections on geometric painting and embodies his retrospective gaze at Macao's history. Furthermore, it leaves a profound, lingering gaze toward the future artistic narratives of two small cities looking at each other from afar.

Co-authored by Mok Wai Hong and Gemini at the foot of Lion Rock, the Summer Solstice of 2026. 

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