Nightmare-Wallpaper (No.DCCC901-16#8): An-Angel-in-Conversation-with-a-Young-Lady

2017 - Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)
90 x 180 cm.

Pak Sheung Chuen

year born: 1977

gender: male

nationality: Chinese

The series Nightmare Wallpapers represents a shift if Chuen’s practice, allowing the artist to immerse himself in an “artistic pilgrimage of self healing” following the failure of the 2014 Umbrella Movement. These drawings were created during the trial of political activists pursued by the government that the artist would regularly attend. During the tribunal, the artist would let his pen slide freely across his notebook, replicating the automatic drawing techniques of the surrealists. He then scans these random traces, blowing them up on the computer, multiplying each fragment, giving way to decorative abstract motifs reminiscent of wallpaper. Through this process Chuen analyzes the details of these unconscious productions, allowing him to begin a psychological healing process, leading him to reconnect with his environment. Furthermore, these drawings, born from the public gallery of a courtroom, speak of the relationship between the State and the individual. Following their creation, works from this series, Street, Court and Prison entered into the public domain, accompanying newspaper articles, and entering the sphere of collective memory.

Pak Sheung Chuen’s practice can be described as immaterial, everyday, process-based, and collaborative. Without producing additional objects, Pak’s projects usually start with a familiar but not necessarily acknowledged idea. However, they go beyond a conceptual gesture. Through repetition and continuously anonymous intervention, the idea gradually starts to take form and infiltrates into the surroundings, leaving subtle traces. Although never visually spectacular, Pak’s projects reconfigure a personal system that involves bodily actions and effectively challenges the existing societal logic and commodity-based culture.

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