Exhibition
Date: 14 November – 31 December 2024
Venue: Kwai Fung Hin Gallery, 01-G04 to G05, G/F, Headquarters Block, Tai Kwun, Central, Hong Kong
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Art Talk: Image in Our Time
Date: 16 November 2024
Time: 3:30pm
Venue: Kwai Fung Hin Gallery, 01-G04 to G05, G/F, Headquarters Block, Tai Kwun, Central, Hong Kong
Speakers: Ms. Paola Angelini, Ms. Catherine Kwai, Dr. Anna Kwong
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About Exhibition
Italian Cultural Institute is pleased to support Image Outside of Time, presented by Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery, the first solo exhibition in Asia of emerging Italian painter Paola Angelini, who is known for her symbolically loaded canvases filled with anachronistic atmosphere. Her aesthetics exudes a kind of quiet dissonance that at once encapsulates and destabilizes the viewer.
Angelini’s work peels back the layers of our mass media culture through the use of age-old symbols and metaphors in her oneiric images. This exhibition calls for a way of seeing and imagining that breaks away from our time-bound mind through Angelini’s psychologically charged works.
Deeply fascinated by the spiritual power of ancient icons found in frescoes, medieval mosaics, antique sculptures and tapestries, the artist excavates symbols from these imageries to construct an alternate world independent of the timeline of our physical reality.
“I think that they are images that have a need to, at a certain point, emerge from a consciousness; they ask me to be represented.” – Paola Angelini
The atmospheric intensity Angelini creates through the treatment of tones and light elicits near-religious responses. Often working within a tight chromatic range around a dominant tone, the artist juxtaposes acid colors with earthy hues to create light that seems to emanate from within the figures.
“What I ask myself is actually what is worth to represent now.” – Paola Angelini
At once surreal and familiar, Angelini’s affective images insist teleological questions in image-making itself, asking the true values of our visual languages from the ancient past to the present. These images collapse time and space, creating a kind of void that is long buried inside each of us. Through her practice, Angelini asks, “what image is really worth to make? How can images guide me to the truth and beauty?”
There are more than one way to understand our reality other than math and data, and Angelini’s work has a way to tell us where to start. Immerse in a moment of silence to uncover your inner self often buried in the cacophony of the digital era.
Paola Angelini
Paola Angelini is an emerging Italian artist whose practice is founded upon the rich tradition of Italian art. Her personal approach to figuration and enigmatic imageries places her in the lineage of influential artists from the Roman School and Magic Realism in the early 20th century. She has had solo exhibitions in different cities in Italy, such as Vicenza (Fondazione Coppola), Venice (Cà Pesaro Museum), Milan (“Italian Painting Now”, Triennale Museum), Urbino (Palazzo Ducale Museum), Prato (Palazzo Pretorio Museum), as well as other countries like the USA and Norway.
About Art Talk
Organized in conjunction with Paola Angelini’s solo exhibition Image Outside of Time, the Art Talk, Image in Our Time, explores the artist’s interest in ancient imageries and the relationship between image and time through a contemporary lens. While the artist creates images beyond the boundary of time, they prompt us to rethink the value of an image in our image saturated culture today.
Angelini and Dr. Anna Kwong, Art Historian and Senior Lecturer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, will join in the conversation to discuss the artist’s inspirations and examine the development of the concept of image throughout the history of art. A particular focus will be paid on the artistic movements in the early 20th century Italy that greatly influenced the artist and inspired the development of Surrealism, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year and remains influential to this day.
Dr. Anna Kwong
Art Historian and Senior Lecturer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Dr. Anna Kwong was trained as an art historian in Italy and Austria. She went to the University of Bologna in Italy from 1990 to 1993 and got her PhD in Art History from Leopold-Franzens University in Innsbruck, Austria, in 2003. Her special interest is in Italian Renaissance art and architecture and Western architecture of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Ms. Catherine Kwai
Founder and CEO of Kwai Fung Hin
Catherine Kwai is the founder of Kwai Fung Hin, a leading art gallery in Hong Kong specializing in 20th century modern art and Asian contemporary art, with a commitment to fostering dialogue between cultural heritage and contemporary expressions with a global perspective. For three decades, its cross-cultural focus has developed into an international portfolio of modern and contemporary artists spanning Europe, Asia and Latin America.