In participation with French May Arts Festival 2021, Alisan Fine Arts is proud to present Chinese Surrealism at Alisan Aberdeen. This exhibition is a response to the French Surrealist exhibition which will take place at the Hong Kong Museum of Art in collaboration with the Pompidou Museum as part of French May Arts Festival this year.

Alisan's exhibition will feature the works of six artists, with a focus on young Hong Kong women artists. They include ink painters Cherie Cheuk Ka-wai and Zhang Xiaoli; emerging artists Ant Ngai Wing-lam and Charlotte Mui, the latter who will be exhibiting her colourful mythological works on paper for the first time in a commercial gallery. The other two artists are well known Hong Kong sculptor Mok Yat-San and international sculptor Wu Shaoxiang. These artists have been selected specifically because they are inspired and interested in Surrealist ideas and imagery such as, dreamscapes and the exploration of the unconscious mind. Using a contemporary Chinese lens, they will portray surrealism with their individual technique and media. The Western surrealist artists they are taking inspiration from include Rene Magritte, Salvador Dali, Man Ray, Alberto Giacometti, Giorgio Chirico and Joan Miro.

Cherie Cheuk Ka-wai (b.1989) specialises in Chinese gongbi (fine-brush) painting. Her subject matters mainly revolve around memory, time, nature, laws of universe, emotions and thoughts. Her artwork also interrogates the development of gongbi after it reached its peak in Song Dynasty, namely how to rejuvenate this traditional Chinese art form in the contemporary world. She obtained a bachelor's degree of Fine Arts with first class honours at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2012 and she finished her Master Degree in Fine Arts in CUHK in 2017. Alisan Fine Arts began exhibiting her works in 2015 and has included them in a number of exhibitions, such as, Uniquely Hong Kong (2020); the inaugural edition of Taipei Dangdai Contemporary Art Fair (2019) ; Women Ink | China Hong Kong (2019); HOPE, a charity exhibition to benefit the Adventist Hospital Foundation (2018); and many more.

Mok Yat-san (b. 1968) graduated from the Department of Fine Arts, at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1993, and obtained his Master of Fine Arts degree at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 2004. From 2006-2011, he worked as the senior instructor at the Department of Fine Arts, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Recently, he works as a part-time lecturer and a full-time artist devoting himself to his art creation. He is now the president of the Hong Kong Sculpture Society. Mok specialised in creating large-scale outdoor 'Ink Art' landscapes and a common motif in his work is a polar bear. He is inspired by nature and often incorporates elements of traditional ink painting, such as butterflies, birds, clouds, mountains and trees. By depicting these forms through contemporary interpretation, his sculptures are transformed into surreal 3-D landscapes.

An emerging artist working mainly in watercolours and digitally, Charlotte Mui's (b.1996) work often reflects her own experiences, visions, and dreams while drawing inspiration from mythologies, art history, theatre, popular culture and home. While Mui did not receive formal art training and instead, studied English Literature and Art History at the University of Hong Kong, obtaining her BA in 2018, she has always enjoyed painting and as a child has won numerous international and local awards for her works. After graduating, Mui is currently working full time at Asia Art Archive. However, after a decade of painting competitively, Mui is currently searching for her own voice and mode of expression. In 2020, she completed and created her own deck of Tarot cards, 'L'Œil de L'Âme Tarot', which she uses exclusively for her fortune-telling endeavours.

Ant Ngai Wing-lam's (b.1986) main medium is painting, and her work often depicts people with the head of a fish. These stories and characters are inspired by her own dreams and surroundings. Having grown up in Hong Kong, her paintings often take place in the landscape of the city. She graduated with a BA from Hong Kong Baptist University Academy of Visual Arts in 2008. This is Alisan Fine Art's first time working with her.

A pioneer in the modern abstract sculpture movement in China, Wu Shaoxiang (b.1957) is known for spearheading the incorporation of Western abstract forms into his oeuvre. Wu was born in Jiangxi in 1957. Following the Cultural Revolution, he studied sculpture at the Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute and later moved to Beijing where he became actively involved in the '85 Movement. There he was awarded the first Beijing Art and Design Scholarship and completed a postgraduate degree at the Central Academy of Arts and Design. His earlier works exhibited elements of Western sculptural styles, due in part to his admiration for the geometrical forms favoured by Brancusi and Henry Moore. The round and sensuous shapes lent Wu's forms a more sexualized language, setting him apart from his more conservative counterparts in China.

Zhang Xiaoli (b. 1989) was born in Guizhou China. In 2008, she received a scholarship which allowed her to move to Hong Kong and study at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She also studied as an exchange student at the University of Berkeley in California, before receiving her Bachelor Degree with a double major in Biology and Fine Art from CUHK. She gained her MA at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 2021. Her early works depicted surreal Chinese landscapes inside small containers using traditional gongbi ink painting techniques. Her more recent works incorporates her interest in biology and science with traditional elements of Chinese landscapes, such as mountains, rocks and trees. The result allows a window into the artist's memories and experiences.

Press release courtesy Alisan Fine Arts.