黑料不打烊

Acts & Paintings: Invisible social and natural events in Hong Kong

Painting is often considered a static art form. A completed canvas with dry paint departs an artist鈥檚 creative studio to be seen by the public. For Angel Vergara, the opposite is true. To paint is to act. It鈥檚 not a passive practice, it鈥檚 an active one. Throughout his long oeuvre, painting has been a form of constant interaction with visible and invisible forces. By bringing his canvases into the world鈥攐ut of the studio鈥檚 confined, safe walls鈥攈e allows them to absorb the environment, continuously changing throughout.鈥疐or this exhibition, Vergara worked in Hong Kong. As Straatman, he ventured into the city鈥檚 natural surroundings, and later, into the metropole鈥檚 lively core. These interventions are named 鈥淎cts & Paintings鈥�, which gives the exhibition its title.

For art to merge with society and culture, the artist needs to plunge. Vergara does so adamantly, by defining the boundaries of his studio as non-existent. Covered in a white sheet, the artist takes on the alter-ego of Straatman (Dutch for 鈥渕an of the street鈥�), where the here and now becomes his nomadic studio. The senses are physically diminished, yet mentally heightened. Vergara takes up his environment by surrounding himself with it. Straatman made his first appearance in 1988 during the Venice Biennial. In front of the Belgian pavilion, Vergara set up camp in his nomadic studio formed by Straatman鈥檚 white sheet. The intervention was a spontaneous one, as he wasn鈥檛 officially invited, but this is a bold demonstration of the unconstrained nature of his practice. Above all, by performing as Straatman, he has a place to paint that allows the artist to relate to his environment. Paradoxically, while concealed beneath the white sheet, he can barely see anything outside of it, yet it allows him to uncover the invisible through the creative act.

As a first step of his stay in Hong Kong, Vergara discovered the nature around the city. He set up camp in places like Tai Tam Reservoir, Deep Water Bay Beach, Shek O Beach, Lamma Island or Mount Davis. The canvasses he brought were made in his Brussels studio, with a preconceived yet abstract idea of the Hong Kong landscape. Upon arriving in the actual atmosphere they were based upon, they underwent a metamorphosis: like the biological phenomenon of mimicry, they changed colour and form.

We think of chameleons or octopi changing colour, animals becoming invisible in their habitat or even pretending to look like a predator as a defence mechanism. The shapes and forms of natural mimicry are endless. When discussing the Mimetic Faculty, Walter Benjamin argues however that 鈥渢he highest capacity for producing similarities is man鈥檚鈥�. It is in art and writing, that the playful game of mimicry takes on a higher form. Vergara is far from invisible as Straatman, quite the contrary. He doesn鈥檛 pretend to look like something else. He doesn鈥檛 practice mimicry, but the work he produces under the white sheet morphs in such a way that it assimilates and merges with the surrounding environment. Doing so in nature is a calm and peaceful activity, a conscious and active meditation. The resulting series breathes these horizontal, painterly landscapes.

Afterward, Vergara moved from Hong Kong鈥檚 serene surroundings to the tumultuous inner city. Straatman appeared in Central District, on the shore of M+, Sheung Wan, Wanchai, Aberdeen, and Flower Market Road. Here, the Acts &Paintings tighten: the direct and oftentimes chaotic presence of the millions of inhabitants moving through the city requires an intense form of concentration. The resulting paintings are more action-driven and sketch-like, capturing fragments of the direct interaction between the artist hidden under his white sheet and the people passing by鈥攍ooking, talking, or sometimes even stepping on the canvas. The works form an impossible-to-decipher mental map of a singular moment in time and space.

The aesthetic differences between the two bodies of work鈥攐ne made in nature, the other in the city鈥攔eveal a contradiction. They show Hong Kong as a particle accelerator: calm and composed on the outside surrounded by its mountains, beaches, and water, yet charged and interactive on the inside. This is a paradox, however, as at the core of chaos is peace, yet at the core of peace is chaos. The city is composed of man-made structures. While the disorderly patterns are seemingly harder to contain than nature's apparent serenity, reality shows that they are inherently connected. A social conflict shares the same disruptiveness as a natural disaster, yet society鈥檚 organised functionality shows parallels with nature鈥檚 homeostasis. Vergara plunges himself into the natural world as well as the human one in a similar fashion. While the aesthetic outcomes are vastly different, the core remains the same: capturing the ever-changing conditions through intuitive strokes of paint, where art moves with its surroundings.

Movement is a crucial element in Vergara鈥檚 practice. This becomes apparent in his well-known video paintings, where the artist鈥檚 brush follows video footage, creating a painting that鈥檚 constantly in motion. In this exhibition, movement plays a crucial role when we look at the central space. Here, we find two works created during a live performance accompanied by local musicians. In the public鈥檚 presence, the artist once again as Straatman, was covered under a white sheet. He positioned himself in the gallery space in front of canvasses covered in charcoal. Guided by the music, but equally so by micro stimuli from the visitors and his surroundings, the artist captured his movements by manually erasing the charcoal. What鈥檚 left is a trace of the performance, a moment captured in time like an abstract photograph made with a long shutter speed. Perceiving Vergara鈥檚 work is like witnessing an event: never still, always shifting, awakening our senses in unexpected ways.