Under the siege of a global pandemic, people have been forced into recalibrating their everyday routines according to the new abnormal, coming to terms with the social distance that no longer stays concealed, and with isolation in strictly confined spaces. To galvanise thought in the functioning of mechanisms, the booth is turned into a hospital consulting room, where a lighter that relentless emits bright light is confined. The medical screens made of party flags adopt an air of festivity to substitute the daily paleness. The mechanical scales at the booth entrance that serve as speed bumps produce mechanical sounds as the crowds move past by, while the numbers on the scales become completely irrelevant. Doubt, angst, and dread echo the sounds in the air, with a lingering sense of déjà vu that dominates all societies and countries across the world. Each disarray of electrical cables depicted in the drawings on the wall seems to morph into its own organic shape, snarled or unraveling, while in fact, it is the same electrical cable that entangles itself in the same loop over and over again. The light box is engulfed by the artist's own signatures written repeatedly until what was legible becomes an utter blackness, a metaphor for a futile attempt to break out of the system.
For the 2021 edition of Art Basel HK, TKG+ is pleased to present Transcend Into Knots, a special project by Hong Kong artist Kong Chun Hei, pivoting around the idea of restriction and constraint. Born in 1987 in Hong Kong, Kong Chun Hei graduated from the fine arts department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2009. He currently lives and works in Hong Kong. Conceptualism predominantly shapes Kong's artistic vocabulary, while his practice stretches intuitively across drawing, video, animation, and installation. Kong investigates the structures and operations of seemingly ordinary phenomena, and considers the possible interferences that could be made from/within them.