Inviting six contemporary artists born or based in Hong Kong to present observations of their inner psyche in response to the world’s “new normal”, Sweeping Vistas is a group exhibition which features the works of Cynthia Mak, Elaine Chiu, Gianluca Crudele, Lokz Phoenix, Ticko Liu, and Tobe Kan.
From realistic depictions of European forests and Hong Kong cityscapes, to haunting paintings of extraterrestrial and metaphorical landscapes, the artists use various approaches to capture their “sweeping vistas” after observing and engaging with both nature and city.
Sweeping Vistas: Participating artists & key highlights
Cynthia Mak
Cynthia Mak is an emerging Hong Kong artist who uses art as her platform to spread love and joy. Her abstract paintings comprise geometric shapes cleverly arranged into unique compositions, which have become her signature style. Her experimentation with lines and colours has also resulted in countless picturesque scenes that exude a pleasant atmosphere.
In Paradise, Cynthia uses a variety of simplistic, brightly coloured geometric forms to create unique abstract landscape paintings that capture the breadth of our ever-changing scenes of nature, stimulating positivity, and excitement as we bid farewell to the end of an era and the beginning of a new chapter.
Elaine Chiu
Elaine Chiu explores collective memories and cultural identities of urban environments through architectural forms. She attained a Bachelor degree in art history at the University of Hong Kong in 2018, where she received the Talent Development Scholarship (2015) and Out Reaching Award (2016) from the Hong Kong SAR Government Scholarship Fund. Her work communicates hybrid memories, identity displacement, and the diasporic communities under urban development and redevelopment.
The poetic cityscape in A Journey Across the Lane and the Sea exudes a poignant feeling of losing something vitally important. Elaine’s play with crisp lighting, deep shadows, and dissolution of refined details indicates the passage of time and fading memories.
Gianluca Crudele
Gianluca Crudele is an Italian painter and designer based in Hong Kong. He approaches the canvas in a contemplative manner, influenced by a spectrum of cultural references including metaphysics, magic realism, and Taoism. Stylistically, he carries on the legacy of modern Italian painters such as Giorgio De Chirico, Gino de Dominicis, and Lorenzo Bonechi by incorporating the essence of antique artistic references – Chinese, in the case of Crudele – resulting in a modernised and inclusive artistic expression. The unique architectural presence of his figures and objects is often charged with a sense of wonder, nostalgia, and serenity, forming a contemplative commentary upon the contemporary human condition and social reality.
In (Poke it with a stick) is it hard or is it soft? and his other works featured in Sweeping Vistas, Gianluca’s portrayal of natural vistas draws out qualities already inherent in reality. Yet, his strange depictions have a haunting and magical quality that adds an eerie sense of unease and cinematic narrative to his paintings.
Lokz Phoenix
Born and raised in Hong Kong, Lokz Phoenix is a painter and ceramicist whose artistic career began when she moved to Paris in 2016. Inspired by the female body as it is part of her identity and a visual language that best represents her, Lokz’s artworks offer an intimate view into the emotion, power, and sensitivity within them.
Lokz Phoenix’s Forest I have been to series captures scenes of a dreamy forest landscape through a romanticised lens, using her skilful play on lighting of the sun and moon. Showcased alongside her canvas paintings are ceramics of snails that have seemingly crawled out of her forest paintings after a long night of rain.
Ticko Liu
Born and raised in Hong Kong, Ticko Liu is an artist with a strong interest in landscape painting. As if mapping the traces of his past, Ticko uses bright colours and familiar scenes, interspersed with wavy, bright lines to reflect on the city and his childhood. By rejecting fixed perspective, pictorial elements such as flames, clouds, and plants are distributed across the canvas and serve as salient metaphors for mutable futures and the decay of material life.
Drawing inspiration from memories of his past and lived experiences of Hong Kong citizens, Ticko creates another plane of realities in Hyperbolic time chamber – The dawn, illustrated using an extraterrestrial landscape where the tragic and wonderful realities of earth, humanity, and interconnections co-exist.
Tobe Kan
Tobe Kan is interested in psychoanalysis, studying her own state, and exploring in retrospect causalities. Her work explores autobiographical experiences and mental states. Experimenting with painting, drawing, and installation, she focuses on examining the human condition of insecurity, in relation to feelings of alienation or being forgotten.
Tobe’s A void series conceptualised her jungle scenery of dense and verdant foliage in tones of iridescent aqua blue, black, and white, experimenting with AI-generated source images. Her paintings serve as a thought-provoking psychological mind map regarding identity, psychoanalysis, collective subconscious, and feelings of alienation during the long period of pandemic isolation.
About JPS Gallery
Established in Hong Kong in 2014 and later in Japan, Paris, and Barcelona, JPS Gallery is an independent contemporary art gallery presenting works of emerging and established artists from around the world. The gallery is founded with dedication to the new digital age and the exploration of fine art and pop culture. JPS focuses on fun and playful works that span across different media and disciplines. Committed to creating a vibrant art community, the gallery regularly presents works of young and emerging artists, as well as contributing to various charity events and auctions.
