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SOUTHERN
Playful Scramble in Dragon’s Lair - Hayaki Nishigaki Solo Exhibition
22 Feb – 17 May, 2025
wamono art
CENTRAL
Through Time—Print Art in Aberdeen Street
22 Feb – 31 Aug, 2025
Print Art Contemporary
CENTRAL
TSANG Kin-Wah: T REE O GO D EVIL
19 Mar – 24 May, 2025
gdm (Galerie du Monde)
WAN CHAI
Three Stories: Monsters, Opium, Time
20 Mar – 13 May, 2025
Kiang Malingue
SHEUNG WAN
The Korean Narrative: Layers of Korean Aesthetics
20 Mar – 17 May, 2025
Soluna Fine Art
SHEUNG WAN
Secret Garden - Byoungho Kim Solo Exhibition
20 Mar – 20 May, 2025
Leo Gallery
SOUTHERN
GONGKAN: ASYNCHRONOUS AFFINITIES
22 Mar – 14 May, 2025
Tang Contemporary Art (Wong Chuk Hang)
SOUTHERN
Soul Light Legacy Plan
22 Mar – 17 May, 2025
DE SARTHE
SOUTHERN
The Garden of Loved Ones: Richard Hakwins
23 Mar – 24 May, 2025
Empty Gallery
SOUTHERN
TRST03: Covey Gong
23 Mar – 24 May, 2025
Empty Gallery
CENTRAL
NIAO NIAO: A Solo Exhibition by Su Xiaobai
24 Mar – 15 May, 2025
Pearl Lam Galleries Hong Kong
CENTRAL
Beneath the Golden Canopy
24 Mar – 16 May, 2025
MASSIMODECARLO
CENTRAL
Beauty Will Save the World: Eight Artists from Southeast Asia
24 Mar – 16 May, 2025
10 Chancery Lane Gallery
CENTRAL
Tradition Transformed
24 Mar – 14 Jun, 2025
Alisan Fine Arts
YAU TSIM MONG
Vapors
25 Mar – 17 May, 2025
PERROTIN
ADMIRALTY
Objects of Play: Hoo Mojong Centennial Retrospective
26 Mar – 6 Jul, 2025
Asia Society Hong Kong Center
WAN CHAI
Best Before Picnic
22 Apr – 27 May, 2025
Hong Kong Arts Centre
SOUTHERN
Group Exhibition: Hon6 hon6 (瀚瀚)
26 Apr – 30 May, 2025
SC Gallery
SOUTHERN
Lin Yan: Everlasting Layers
6 May – 16 Aug, 2025
Alisan Atelier
WAN CHAI
Crafting Memories
7 May – 26 Jun, 2025
Hong Kong Arts Centre
CENTRAL
A Moveable Feast
8 May – 28 Jun, 2025
Galerie KOO
CENTRAL
MOMENT
9 May – 30 May, 2025
JPS Gallery
SOUTHERN
South Ho Siu Nam: Wandering Daily
13 May – 7 Jun, 2025
Blindspot Gallery
CENTRAL
Yoon Hyup: Montage
15 May – 5 Jul, 2025
Tang Contemporary Art (Central)
CENTRAL
Cy Gavin
22 May – 2 Aug, 2025
Gagosian
SOUTHERN
Test 2
30 May – 30 May, 2025
Hong Kong Art Gallery Association
Tang Kwong San: Rootstock
12 Sep – 9 Nov, 2024
gdm (Galerie du Monde)

Tang Kwong San: Rootstock - Opening 12 September 2024, 5-7pm

gdm Hong Kong proudly presents Tang Kwong San: Rootstock, the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Using the bauhinia plant as the main motif, Rootstock approaches diasporic identity like a sterile plant that is grafted from intergenerational histories. Through graphite drawings, oil paintings, handmade objects, photography, and installation, Tang’s new work navigates between deconstruction and reconstruction, examining how the tissues of our identities are splintered and joined.

Born in Dongguan in 1992, Tang immigrated to Hong Kong with his father when he was five years old. His mother joined them five years later. Straddling between two homes, between colonial and post-colonial Hong Kong, Tang’s work is saturated with a sense of loss and grief.

First discovered in Hong Kong by a French Catholic Missionary in 1880, the bauhinia × blakeana is also known as the Hong Kong Orchid. Unable to self-reproduce, the bauhinia plant can only be propagated through grafting. In a series of new paintings, Tang maps connections between the dependent nature of the bauhinia and his diasporic identity, which often feels circumstantially shaped and not easily defined.

Tang continues to weave between personal and collective histories in his graphite sketches. In a two-part work, Tang depicts an inverted cow’s head and body respectively. Both pieces are based on a cast of a cow figurine Tang found in a garbage dump near his studio. Part of a larger set of Catholic statues depicting the Birth of Jesus, the cow figure is at once an allusion to the 1997 handover of Hong Kong and a reference to his late mother’s birthday—both occurring in the year of the ox. Through contrasting shades of black and white, the animal’s form is made out from negative, rather than positive space. That is to say, its presence is recognized through its absence.

Moving beyond the graphite medium, The Brass Ax & Blakeara (2024) is a video work featuring the artist repeatedly chopping at a bauhinia tree. Originally an award to Hong Kong firefighters, the blunt axe Tang uses is a relic of the British colonial era. The brass axe is also a nod to the Aesop fable “The Honest Woodcutter,” a cautionary tale about the need to be honest in spite of self-interest. Unlike the parable, honesty is not always rewarded in real life—one could even argue that the opposite is usually true. Tang’s repetitive and at times seemingly futile actions reflect a sense of desperation and resignment in the face of such disillusionment.

In an act of reconstruction, Tang encases moth specimens in the resin walls of Wishing Pond (2024). Homophonic with the Cantonese term for “I,” or ngo, moths are scattered around the water-less well as if mid-flight. The self, containing fractured multitudes, is transformed into a vessel for wish-making. It is also a vessel of commemoration, as the winged insects are often seen as the spirits of loved ones in Chinese folklore. Like “I,” the name of Tang’s late mother includes a homophone of the Cantonese word for moth.

Through found objects and transposed plants, Rootstock examines the familial, social, and historical fragments that forge one’s identity. In the echoes of Tang’s destruction and under his painstaking documentation, these fragments are rejoined in a sublimation of grief and ultimately, hope.

gdm (Galerie du Monde)

Address: 108, Ruttonjee Centre, 11 Duddell St., Central

Opening Hours: Tue–Sat 10am–7pm

Phone: +852 2525 0529

Email: enquiry@galeriedumonde.com

Website: galeriedumonde.com