EJAR Artist-in-Residency Programme
Curated by EJAR
Co-presented by EJAR & Square Street Gallery
May - Jun 2022
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Curated by EJAR
Co-presented by EJAR & Square Street Gallery
May - Jun 2022
Square Street Gallery, in collaboration with EJAR|Ragora is pleased to present Hong Kong artist Lousy as part of a studio residency, leading to a solo exhibition opening on the 11th of May. Using the residency as an interruption from his standard practice, the artist, while creating his signature figures, expands his iconography and moves towards a central tenet to his practice: a desire to locate the universality of culture through its interconnections. The building, situated in the midst of one of the last villages on Hong Kong Island, evinces a sense of rawness in contrast with the city’s polished skyscrapers.
By establishing a speculative link between the now and a now-forgotten then, Lousy’s new body of work is jubilant and alive, yet aptly anachronistic. The figures he renders — much like their historic predecessors — are beyond the paroxysms that accompany culture today. Instead, they open up a liminal space, suggesting a com- monality in the genesis of our grand narratives.
In a new series of masks, Lousy continues his practice of working with paper-mache. In the artist’s hands, paper and cardboard are twisted and contorted to resemble faces, hands, and eyes. Textured and bright, the three-di- mensional works use monstrosity — a term to be understood in all of its valences — as their point of departure. Reminiscent of religious artifacts, the masks address the space where the lines between fiction and reality blur; each becomes a vessel to reach a world — a world just adjacent to ours.
Lousy developed his lexicon with a series of apprehensible motifs, typically rendered in bold lines against con- trasting colors. Constellating on the painterly surface, the signs and symbols become synecdoches for a con- cealed grammar. This diverse presentation not only speaks to the breadth of Lousy’s oeuvre, but also articulates the artist’s practice as a gesture of world-building, one wherein transcultural phantasms find utopia.
About the Artist
Inspired by the Lucerne cave paintings and the lines of Jean Cocteau, Hong Kong native Lousy strips down his visual language to simplified, wavy, rhythmic lines with a bright neon palette, forming the basis of his distinc- tive signature style. Found across on all surfaces, across all spaces, his stylised motifs — the prominent kiss face, Buddha, and all-seeing eye — move with the élan of the oft-hidden energy of the city and form the artist’s lexicon. A member of the Hong Kong underground scene, Lousy frequently collaborates with musicians, fashion designers, filmmakers, amongst others. His work conveys a spectrum of emotions with a stripped-down ap- proach and is often in conversation with various cultural phenomena such as ancient cave paintings, punk rockand manga.
Lousy has exhibited in Hong Kong, Taiwan, US and Australia and has been the subject of solo exhibitions at J-01, Hong Kong; Bedroom, Hong Kong; Mihn Gallery, Hong Kong; Gallery HZ, Hong Kong; and Postscript, Phil- adelphia. For Art Central 2021, he presented a large mural as part of the fair’s public installation program
https://www.instagram.com/lousylousy
By establishing a speculative link between the now and a now-forgotten then, Lousy’s new body of work is jubilant and alive, yet aptly anachronistic. The figures he renders — much like their historic predecessors — are beyond the paroxysms that accompany culture today. Instead, they open up a liminal space, suggesting a com- monality in the genesis of our grand narratives.
In a new series of masks, Lousy continues his practice of working with paper-mache. In the artist’s hands, paper and cardboard are twisted and contorted to resemble faces, hands, and eyes. Textured and bright, the three-di- mensional works use monstrosity — a term to be understood in all of its valences — as their point of departure. Reminiscent of religious artifacts, the masks address the space where the lines between fiction and reality blur; each becomes a vessel to reach a world — a world just adjacent to ours.
Lousy developed his lexicon with a series of apprehensible motifs, typically rendered in bold lines against con- trasting colors. Constellating on the painterly surface, the signs and symbols become synecdoches for a con- cealed grammar. This diverse presentation not only speaks to the breadth of Lousy’s oeuvre, but also articulates the artist’s practice as a gesture of world-building, one wherein transcultural phantasms find utopia.
About the Artist
Inspired by the Lucerne cave paintings and the lines of Jean Cocteau, Hong Kong native Lousy strips down his visual language to simplified, wavy, rhythmic lines with a bright neon palette, forming the basis of his distinc- tive signature style. Found across on all surfaces, across all spaces, his stylised motifs — the prominent kiss face, Buddha, and all-seeing eye — move with the élan of the oft-hidden energy of the city and form the artist’s lexicon. A member of the Hong Kong underground scene, Lousy frequently collaborates with musicians, fashion designers, filmmakers, amongst others. His work conveys a spectrum of emotions with a stripped-down ap- proach and is often in conversation with various cultural phenomena such as ancient cave paintings, punk rockand manga.
Lousy has exhibited in Hong Kong, Taiwan, US and Australia and has been the subject of solo exhibitions at J-01, Hong Kong; Bedroom, Hong Kong; Mihn Gallery, Hong Kong; Gallery HZ, Hong Kong; and Postscript, Phil- adelphia. For Art Central 2021, he presented a large mural as part of the fair’s public installation program
https://www.instagram.com/lousylousy
Foto by Shek Po Kwan