GALLERY 881
881 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6A 3Y1
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OFFERING EXHIBITION
Exhibition with artist Lam Wong
Exhibition
June 22 - July 31, 2024
Opening Reception
June 22, 2024 from 12 - 5 pm
Artist Talk
Lam Wong in conversation with Hank Bull
Wednesday June 26, 2024, 7pm
Tea Ceremony with Lam Wong (Free RSVP)
Sunday, July 28, 2024, 1 - 5pm
EXHIBITION STATEMENT
Alone I hike with deer.
Cheerfully I sing with village children.
The stream under the cliff cleanses my ears.
The pine on the mountain top fits my heart.
...
On the broad river, so vast, the spring day is about to
dwindle.
Willow blossoms, fluttering about, dot my patched
robe.
One verse of a fisherman’s song inside the dense mist;
This boundless grieving, for whom is it carried on?
Ryokan
Amidst the chaos and madness of current world affairs, Lam Wong reinforces the important notion of human connection to nature as a form of survival and a way of being to fight urban isolation, social disintegration, and moral decay in humanity. A self-care mechanism during times of turmoil.
Offering conveys Wong’s deep meditation on his ongoing investigation into the human condition and fragility of life. His concern for our state of mental wellbeing under the present political climate of intense polarization and an increasingly divided and violent world. The works also express his profound respect for trees as sentient beings. One of the photo works, Offering (Clinging Pine), taken in Banff (2023), is a testament to its resilient spirit. The biography of this clinging pine tree on the Bow River includes sitting on an important geographical marker of the Earth’s Permian extinction some 252 million years ago, a severe mass extinction event also known as the Great Dying. The pine tree reminds Wong of his own visit to Yellow Mountain, a high mountain full of famous pine trees, in China prior to the global pandemic. Coincidentally, the artist was told that Banff and Yellow Mountain are sister cities.
The works in this exhibit are all new works showing for the first time, including many of Wong’s creative outputs from his 2023 visual art residency in Banff.
ARTIST BIO
Lam Wong (b. 1968, Xiamen, Fujian, China) is a visual artist and curator who immigrated from Hong Kong to Canada during the 1980s and studied design, art history and painting in Alberta and British Columbia. Wong works with painting, installation and performance to engage with themes such as the perception of reality, the role of art and the relationship between time, memory and space. He sees artmaking as an ongoing spiritual practice and his work draws upon his knowledge of Western art history and his interest in Taoism and Buddhism. Wong’s creative approach is often concerned with blending Eastern philosophies and challenging the notion of painting.
Lam Wong has been based in Vancouver BC since 1998. He has recently exhibited his work and performed at Campbell River Art Gallery, Canton-sardine, Centre A, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, Gallery 881, Griffin Art Projects, Unit 17, Walter Phillips Gallery, Western Front, and Vancouver Art Gallery.