16 Mar Art Central Hong Kong 2023
Art Central Hong Kong 2023, which takes place 22 – 25 March 2023, marks Artemis Art’s physical return to the fair, a cornerstone event of Hong Kong Arts Month.
This year, the art fair takes place at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC) beginning with the VIP Preview on 21 March, which is also where Art Basel Hong Kong (22 – 25 March 2023) is held.
Artemis Art will be participating in booth A36, part of the Gwo Wai curated booth section, featuring a collaborative project by Dedy Sufriadi and Taufik Ermas entitled Future Myth.
Our participation in this year’s edition marks our third appearance in Art Central Hong Kong, the last time being in 2021 (in the HERE/THERE section, specifically set up for galleries unable to physically attend due to pandemic restrictions), and before that back in 2017. Our participation this time around also marks the first time Artemis Art is presenting a focused curated project. Click on the Future Myth tab to find out more about what we will be showing.
For artwork enquiries, contact Artemis Art at in**@ar***************.com, or via WhatsApp at +60 12-373 2188 (the number may also be used to reach us via WeChat, Line, or Viber). Alternatively, you may use the Facebook Messenger chat function displayed on this screen.
Sneak Preview of Future Myth
Future Myth, a collaborative effort by Dedy Sufriadi and Taufik Ermas, invites viewers to pause and ponder about how the far future might regard the “past” (in effect, our present time), through the ‘discovery’ of an ancient artifact, at an unspecified time in the future.
The full installation comprises Dedy Sufriadi’s Story of Neo Myth, a painting installation comprising eight of his Book Series works, arranged in a stacked two-layer cube configuration, and a series of eight Cut-Out paintings entitled Sleep Walker. The preview images below were captured separately in the respective artists’ studios, providing an idea of what the project looks like.
We will be updating this page with actual installation shots once the project has been completely installed at the art fair.
Future Myth
It’s a brisk Spring morning in the year 2223, and the archaeological team is thrilled with their new discovery. The night before, they uncovered artifacts not seen by the vast majority of mankind in over a century. Legend has it that these artifacts were a common object used to physically convey information. It was a find that would elucidate questions pertaining to humankind’s past.
~ o ~
Although the archaeologists had only read about these artifacts in historical records about early 21st century culture and society, just about anyone living today in 2023 would immediately recognize the find: fossilized books.
Future Myth is premised on such a hypothetical discovery, occurring at an undisclosed time in the future.
In this collaborative project, Story of Neo Myth, the painting installation by Dedy Sufriadi, is the ‘artifact’, while the Sleep Walker series of cut-out paintings by Taufik Ermas represents broader philosophical and psychological implications of the artifact being found.
The project doesn’t seek to predict what discussions or questions might arise, nor venture any answers. Instead, it invites us to ponder what intellectual and thought environments might exist in this hypothetical future, based on our experiences and knowledge of how we ourselves view contemporary events and our own history in present times.
Text, and pretty much everything related to it, has been a key part of Dedy Sufriadi’s artistic career and practice, spanning some two decades. He has observed that there is a general decline of analytical comprehension in contemporary society, particularly in the reading of events – both contemporary and historical – which quite often are viewed through parochial and partisan lenses. For historical events, there is the added tendency for presentism being generously applied. As a result, the actual essence and outcomes of these events become severely distorted, misunderstood, and misrepresented.
Compounded by the accelerated dissemination of information via advanced communication technologies, these distorted viewpoints spread like wildfire, causing them to eventually be accepted as ‘truths’ within segments of contemporary society with a tendency to accept information without much critical filtering. Such a tendency has emerged, in part, due to shifts in how information is consumed; a shift in literacy from active reading of physical printed materials to quick, bite-sized consumption of information transmitted through electronic media. These narrow and superficial readings often lead to misconstrued comprehension of events, creating new ‘truths’ whose accuracy is suspect.
The Sleep Walker series of works by Taufik Ermas, presented as a series of eight cut-out paintings, encapsulates the articulation of society’s “superficial reading” by offering perspectives premised upon functional human cognitive traits and psychology.
Taufik’s works, visual translations and depictions of communal/collective memory, asks the viewer to ponder the broader effects of how these misinterpreted takes on events and history might influence a community’s worldview, in the process of searching for communal existential meaning.
The indistinct urban landscape that acts as a backdrop to Taufik’s cut-out human silhouettes depicts the artist’s visualization of mental refraction, how mental images of our experiences are not always accurate representations of reality, but are instead how reality is perceived and processed.
Our life in today’s modern and increasingly urbanised world is driven by ‘wants’, not merely requirements for personal sustenance but also by the constant influence of our surroundings and the non-stop stimuli our senses are bombarded with on a daily basis. Increasingly, these stimuli are influenced by commercialism and materialism, exacerbated by the proliferation of online media in our daily lives.
What we perceive, therefore, as freedom to pursue these ‘wants’ are in fact illusions; they are pseudo-freedoms, allowing free will to operate, but within the bounds of a system that dictates what these ‘wants’ should be.
Taking into context the correlation of ideations embodied within the two artists’ works, Future Myth explores and raises interesting questions about how the hypothetical future might view us today.
We cannot, of course, predict what the world will be like centuries from now. Perhaps educated guesses based on observed trajectories existent today, but we’ll never know for sure.
Through Future Myth, both Dedy Sufriadi and Taufik Ermas invite us to pause and ponder.
How will our present-day world be perceived by those living in the future, 50, 100 years, or even centuries from now? Will the trends of ‘superficial reading’ of events, particularly from the past, coupled with humankind continuing to exercise their pseudo-freedoms, remain characteristics of future societies, or even exacerbated in comparison to today?
What ‘future myths’ about the ‘past’ will emerge, derived from these uncovered artifacts from our ‘present’?
Nobody knows the future with certainty. We can, however, identify ongoing patterns of change.
Alvin Toffler
Contemporary abstract artist Dedy Sufriadi has a wide repertoire of work and styles, encompassing the use of many different elements and mediums. The many disparate visual styles that can be found across his vast body of work can be tied together by one common trait – his mastery of color and composition. Dedy is perhaps best known for his work related to text, an element of modern life that humans are subject to at virtually every waking moment, whether realized or not.
This year marks the artist’s third appearance at Art Central Hong Kong with Artemis Art, debuting in the 2017 edition and as one of the participating artists with us for the HERE/THERE section of the 2021 edition.
His strong showing in the art fairs participated in this year continues the momentum Dedy’s career has experienced in 2022, the artist making major art fair debuts in Taiwan (Art Solo 2022), and in Europe with Personal Structures: Reflection (organised by the European Cultural Centre Italy [ECC Italy], a Venice Biennale parallel even), plus being included as part of our lineup for Asia NOW 2022 in Paris, France.
As one of the two components in Future Myth, his installation, Story of Neo Myth, continues Dedy’s foray into creating large scale book-based installations, further expanding his repertoire of art creation. While text remains a primary subject matter in his art, installations have allowed him to further articulate the many new challenges he has observed with the changing nature of reading habits, the shift of text delivery from analogue to digital, and related to this, the changing literacy this shift has contributed to.
Individual Work Details
Story of Neo Myth, Dedy Sufriadi’s installation that forms part of the Future Myth project, comprises eight paintings from the artist’s Book Series. Physical books and/or notebooks are collaged onto the canvas surface, creating a new non-uniform surface upon which the artist creates his compositions. A more detailed view of each work is provided below; to view the artwork details and a larger image, click on the thumbnails below.
Visually articulating the dialectics of space, and delving into human psychological scarring and memories are among the ideas central to the body of work by Indonesian artist Taufik Ermas. He survived a near-death tragedy during the major 2006 Yogyakarta earthquake that caused his home to collapse, burying him alive for a short period of time before being rescued. This life-changing experience has become an important touchstone in his artistic career as he continues to deal with the trauma experienced more than a decade and a half ago.
Augmentation of canvas surfaces is a key feature in Taufik’s artworks, achieved either through his layer/contour technique, physical ridges (or its inverse, niches) created on the canvas surface without tearing through or cutting the canvas; or through physical canvas and frame modifications to create negative spaces within his visual narratives, as is used in the Sleep Walker series exhibited as part of the Future Myth project.
Through his paintings on these augmented surfaces, Taufik’s works articulate the many philosophical and psychological nuances of human life. His expressions are the result of the artist’s keen observations of life, both in his immediate community and surroundings (including his own experiences), or of global events and phenomena.
Individual Work Details
Sleep Walker, a series of eight cut-out paintings by Taufik Ermas forms part of the Future Myth project. The void spaces created within each painting are outlines of human figures, against deserted urban scenes, each pose inferring the search for something. A more detailed view of each work is provided below; to view the artwork details and a larger image, click on the thumbnails below.
Future Myth catalog
Browse the catalog here or download via this link
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Installation Images Coming Soon!
We will be posting images of the actual setup onsite before the start of the VIP Preview on 21 March 2023
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