Houldsworth
33-34 Cork Street
London W1S 3NQ
t 020 7434 2333
f 020 7434 3636
www.houldsworth.co.uk
Financial
Times Review of Gordon Cheung @ Houldsworth Gallery,
FT Magazine, Saturday 16 and Sunday 17 October,
“Using our own pink paper as a metaphor for the global age,
Gordon Cheung has created a sublime visual language”. By Jackie
Wullschalger
Hollow Sunsets
– Gordon Cheung
11 October – 13 November
The Grand Hack, 2004, Financial Times, acrylic gel, Chinese ink and spray
paint on board, 75 x 100cm, 29 1/2 x 39 1/2 in.
“Essentially my paintings reflect the techno sublime, where information
overwhelms the individual, causing a flickering perception of realities“,
says Cheung, who presents his first solo show at Houldsworth this Autumn.
‘Hollow
Sunsets’ are a way of seeing the world through the removed visions
of cyberspace – virtual landscapes that collapse culture and distance.
Influenced by his residencies in Japan, Pakistan and at the Chinese Arts
Centre in Manchester, Cheung continually re-evaluates the idea of place
and identity as challenged through globalisation. The resulting images
reflect the fascinating contradictions and complexities of a world were
Hello Kitty and Planet of the Apes merge with palm trees and housing blocks.
Using
a complex mix of acrylic gel, spray paint, collage from the Financial
Times, computer manipulated imagery and Chinese ink drawing, Cheung creates
surfaces as compelling as the array of images that haunt them. The splashes
of smooth luminous spray paint jar against a dizzying flow of collaged
numbers that merge with the black and white images of awe inspiring environments.
The use of the Financial Times listings has a duel purpose; it
at once offers a dense indecipherable background to the work and at the
same time represents the growing global geographies of economic and technological
communities.
Punky
images and meticulous collage make up Cheung’s schizophrenic landscapes
of colliding dream-worlds, that oscillate between the utopic and dystopic.
As one approaches the landscapes the images dissolve into distinct
parts each becoming strangely flat. The illusory surfaces reduce to planes
of material and texture, a crucial move to fracture the seductively bizarre
world Cheung creates, allowing us to reflect on the increasingly virtual
environments that we inhabit. Gordon
Cheung graduated from The Royal College, 2001. Cheung is currently
showing at the Liverpool Biennale and in the past year he has completed
art residencies in Japan, Pakistan and UK. In 2003 he received the Arts
Council England International Art Award and the British Council International
Arts Award and this year Cheung was a finalist in the Lexmark European
Art Prize 2003, Pizza Express Prospects Prize 2004, BOC Award 2004 and
Jerwood Drawing Prize 2004. Last year he showed in ‘Yes, I am a
Long Way from Home’, Nunnery, London (inc catalogue), Toured: Wolverhampton
Art Gallery, Herbert Read Gallery, Canterbury and Northern Gallery for
Contemporary Art, Sunderland (with Peter Doig, Paul Morrison, George Shaw,
and others), One Day’, Gallery Coridoor, Iceland, Perspectives’,
Galerie Koch, Germany, Collage’, Bloomberg Space, London with Chris
Ofili, Frank Stella, Richard Prince, Robert Rauchenberg and others) Stray
Show’, Chicago. He has also
exhibited in many national exhibitions including Unscene’, Gasworks,
London (inc catalogue), 2002 ‘CD1’, Marlborough Fine Arts,
London (inc catalogue) 2001. Forthcoming exhibitions include ‘Thermo
at The Lowry and a major solo show at the Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester
in 2006.
For further information or images please contact Ben Cranfield
on 020 7434
2333 or ben@houldsworth.co.uk
Houldsworth Gallery
33-34 Cork Street
London W1S 3NQ
t
020 7434 2333
f 020 7434 3636
gallery@houldsworth.co.uk
www.houldsworth.co.uk
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