Galerie Koo and Up & Up Art are pleased to announce a joint photography exhibition “From Mundane, Multitudes” by Yung Tak Cheung and Danny Chau.

Upon fresh eyes, everything is wondrous, imperfections often unseen, willfully ignored. Celebration without cynicism. Set against the ponderous, unceasing creep of time, mind and matter are plundered, both. Things that once suffused empty places with radiance, can now no longer be rallied to elicit such joy. Yet time is only a vector for change, whether it is within or without.

From Mundane, Multitudes is a pilgrimage, which posits how our perception of things, ourselves and the places we inhabit, through the lens of time, informs an individual’s world view.

Yun Tak-Cheung’s smaller works are an invitation to quiet intimacy. He imparts great importance on the myriad overlooked objects in daily life; relatively diminutive statures juxtaposition their immense value as silent adjudicators. The pieces he has curated are commonplace, allowing us to form our own associations, highlighting the shared humanity which connects, rather than divides. All things have different meanings for different people, at different moments. Some speak to time not always able to enact change, or for us to unravel truth, others still are portions of our past, misremembered. Through energetic colours, merging images with subtle Chinese characters to create texture and mythology, they are transformed into talismans of optimism and hope in the face of adversity and struggles of life.

Danny Chau’s use of metal dye sublimation is a deliberate musing on the causality between what is and what we imagine is. Rooted in the belief our reality and our dreams are all but illusionary playgrounds, he uses such an approach to speak to this transitory phenomenon. Raw, encompassing close-ups of sediment and rock clash against unyielding human structures. Their tones representative of the magnitude of nature’s indelible power, evoking our eternal compliance.

In some ways, we observe the unerring pliability of humanity beneath slumber’s embrace, to accept the absurdities of dreamscapes without question nor qualm. A sense of unquiet invites curiosity, possibility of impossibility, and with that, the concept of time being in flux, a mere construct, for us to shape, as it shapes us.