About the artist
Horace Yue-Chiu Wong 黃宇超 was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Australia, with over 20 years professional experience in branding and visual communications. He lives in Hong Kong, works as a design manager and leads commercial creative projects for a global consultancy firm. Having established a career in visual design, he pursued further learning and exploration in contemporary art and graduated with a bachelor degree in fine arts at RMIT University (co-hosted by Hong Kong Art School), major in painting.
Education
2022 Bachelor of Fine Arts, RMIT University (GPA 3.9)
2009 Master of Design (Distinction), The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
1997 Bachelor of Commerce, The University of Queensland
Exhibitions
2023 遊園終日 Umarell, Pao Galleries, Hong Kong Arts Centre
2023 The Collectible Art Fair, Pao Galleries, Hong Kong Arts Centre
2024 熟悉的陌生 Familiar strangeness, The Gallery of Hong Kong Art School
Awards
2022 Vice Chancellor’s list of Academic Excellence, RMIT University
2023 Art6 Award, Art 6 Studio, Hong Kong
artist statement
My artistic queries of utopia and ideologies originated with my reflections on global turmoil and conflicts. My works are responses to dystopian reality of a polarised world. They manifest as satirical visual medley that metaphorise the delusions and ephemeral gratification ones experience in pursuit of utopia. Fabrication of a better world ends in vain when beliefs and ideologies entrench hegemony.
Distortion and fantasy are the subjects of my visual investigation. Distortion is my visual language; fantasy is my subject of painting. As a whimsical fantasia, my works engender reimagination of utopian truth and ideals by presenting contorted figures in satirical medley.
Images of exulting characters from propaganda and fairy tales inspired my latest body of paintings. My works sabotage the one-sidedness of propaganda by distorting their narratives, displacing the protagonists for a new dialogue with the fairies. By appropriating found images and subverting them to construct an exuberant bubbly space, I contort the fixity of their beliefs and recreate their narration to reflect the absurdity and ambivalence of their utopian pursuits.
The fluidity in my mark-making responds to the contorted reality of the time, and I draw on their fugitive visual quality to challenge the fixity of ideologies. The depiction of glint on the bubbles reflects the vulnerability and duplicity of fanatics. The bubbles are presented as a hedonistic place for the exulting believers to revel in, and the enigmatic visual texture of the paintings suggests the delusion of ideologies.
My art practice evolves in an unsettling era. Dichotomy, discordance, disruption… Unshakeable yet contentious ideologies exacerbate the tension. I see the world as a flux of distortion, in fantasy I question plausible advocacy.