KING OF KOWLOON - TSANG TSOU CHOI SOLO EXHIBITION (solo)

OVERVIEW

EXHIBITION SYNOPSIS

Saamlung is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new work from the late Hong Kong outsider artist Tsang Tsou Choi, perhaps best known by the epithet from which this exhibition borrows its title: the “King of Kowloon.” From the golden years of midcentury colonial Hong Kong almost to his death in 2007, Tsang was notorious for the distinctive writing he left across the terrain of the city: believing that his family had once been deeded the rights to the land now constituting the core of urban Kowloon, the artist engaged in a monomaniacal project of righting this ancient injustice by executing calligraphy describing his geneaological and political situation on lamp posts, electric utility boxes, fences, walls, and other publicly accessible surfaces from one end to the other of the former British territory, demanding his righteous returns.

Fortunately recognized for his aesthetic output well before his death, Tsang Tsou Choi is widely known throughout Hong Kong and across greater China as a fixture of collective memory, an integral element of the urban texture of the territory. Until now, however, much of the attention he has received from the cultural world has positioned him in the realm of street art and design, resulting in all manner of product collaborations and visual inspirations on consumer objects.

As the first exhibition of work from Tsang Tsou Choi in the gallery context, this project positions him as the historical precedent for an alternative future; that is to say, we trace back to his position a certain rupture within Hong Kong art history by which we might locate in his stance the first properly contemporary artist in a region still haunted by the ideological specters of modernism. By offering certain possibilities for public intervention alongside a concerted disavowal of social responsibility, Tsang becomes, in retrospect, a key figure for cultural production today. This exhibition examines his work as painting, as calligraphy, and as sculpture; in approaching the artifacts of his practice as contemporary art, a measure of spatial perspicacity and conceptual rigor emerges.

The core of the exhibition focuses on a series of some half-dozen pieces in ink on board and cloth, large-scale paintings that hold their own within even the most recent discussions of the return to analytical expressionism in non-figurative painting today. Further works on display include a number of pieces in pen on paper and several calligraphic-cum-sculptural interventions carried out on objects like umbrellas, lanterns, and utility boxes. Vintage photographic documentation of Tsang Tsou Choi and his work installed in situ is also available separately for research and perusal.

In parallel with the exhibition, the project involves the launch of a small catalogue documenting the work approached here. Published by the gallery and designed by Beijing artist Ruan Qianrui—chosen because his ink and graphic work shares a certain material sensibility in common with that of Tsang Tsou Choi—the pamphlet contains new research and critical analysis from Abby Chen, curator and deputy director of the Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco. A portion of proceeds from the exhibition and publication project will benefit the creation of a new foundation to oversee further research, exhibition, and collection of the work and legacy of the artist.

About the artist: Tsang Tsou Choi, who passed away in 2007 after a lifetime of outsider aesthetic production, was the artist better known as the “King of Kowloon.” Born in Guangdong in 1921, he moved to Hong Kong in 1937 and, after discovering certain documents amongst his possessions, came to believe by 1956 that he was the rightful ruler of a portion of the British colony. Spending decades in conflict with the police and courts, Tsang insisted on writing out his geneaology and understanding of the world as calligraphic graffiti across Hong Kong, claiming this urban space for himself and his family. By 1997 he had become known to the art world, and was included in a series of key exhibitions by curators Hou Hanru and Hans Ulrich Obrist, including the traveling project “Cities on the Move” and the “Zone of Urgency: Canton Express” project of the 2003 Venice Biennale. His work belongs to a number of private collections, and has most recently appeared at the Sotheby's sale of a portion of the Ullens Collection.

About the gallery: Saamlung is the commercial gallery and project office founded by critic and curator Robin Peckham in 2011. Located in downtown Central, Hong Kong, the gallery presents work by emerging and historically significant artists from greater China and around the world in concise solo projects, curated group exhibitions, publications, and other satellite events, aiming to fill a certain gap through intellectually rigorous work with a core set of artists developing the international rhetoric of contemporary art in new and interesting ways. The Saamlung model is research-driven and focuses on placing work within the exciting collections currently restructuring global visual culture to tell the story of a cosmopolitan present.