Artworks / Writings
Slow Motion[1]
Josette Mazzella di Bosco Balsa
La pittura é cosa mentale
-Leonardo da Vinci Trattato della Pittura
The famous definition that Leonardo da Vinci gave to the art of painting could be extended to the whole field of visual arts. It applies particularly to artists of our time whose work expresses ideas, ideologies and philosophies, not only through painting but also using multimedia means of expression that include their own body as a medium. Ho Siu-kee is one of these conceptual artists. In the context of Hong Kong art scene, he has built a unique body of work based on a deep reflection about the body and its physical limits, and the interrelation of the body and the mind, of man and his environment.
Before studying sculpture at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michiganand with a Doctor of Fine Art from the RMITUniversityin Australia, Ho Siu-kee worked with Cheung Yee, the most renowned sculptor in Hong Kong, famous for his vocabulary of geometrical forms inspired by pictograms and ancient motifs of the Chinese traditional culture. However Siu-kee did not follow any master nor did he join any school or movement. Instead, he created a radically new language, first submitting his body to a series of tests, then recording his performances on video. Like a scientist in a laboratory, he elaborated a methodology of research and invented his own tools of experimentation. His “dream machines” remind Duchamp’s ready-mades and Tinguely’s machines à ne rien faire (useless), mainly because they look more like industrial products than pure aesthetic creations. Ho Siu-kee’s constructions are rational artifacts invented to put his own body in situations of tension. The purpose of his persistent quest is to experience primordial perceptions at their phenomenological level.
“Walking on Two Balls” in 1995 was a way to feel the precarious balance of the first steps, or better, and to make the viewers aware of the complexity of what looks like the very simple act of walking. “The Third Eye” (1996), is an ingenious device to dismount the mechanism of vision, turning obvious the hidden, unconscious process that results in the act of seeing. With “Flying Machine” (1995-1996), and the “Sisyphus Chair” (1998), the myths of Greece are revisited by Ho Siu-kee to show how absurd are man’s attempts to go beyond the physical limits of his body. A series of works, “Gravity Hoop” in 1997, and “An Evolutionary Body” in 2000, illustrate in a very original way the scientific theories that explain the human body as a machine, constrained by the laws of the Universe.
Ho Siu-kee’s performances are remarkable. Viewers can watch them on video; they can see the artist accomplishing simple tasks in repetitive movements. He is experiencing the limits of his body perceptions at their most elementary level, with the help of the machines he created. At the same time works of art and laboratory instruments, even looking like factory tools, these machines are allusive to many connotations. Ho Siu-kee looks like an athlete trying to break a record, or maybe more like a worker who becomes an appendix of the machine, like Charlie Chaplin in the satirical Modern Times. One of his most impressive installations (performance and video) was presented at Venice Biennale in 2001 under the name of “Golden Proportion”. Ho Siu-kee devised an ingenious way to present the most important – and mysterious - number in mathematics, known since the Pythagoreans inGreece, and used by architects and sculptors, as well as musicians and poets until nowadays. He described his work: “I hammer a golden pin24cm-long which is the length of my head, in order to extend it to164cm, which is the length of my whole body. By repeating this body movement that brings the mind into a state verging into unconsciousness, the change in the physical state of the gold becomes a metaphor of the pursuit for a metaphysically perfect model (the Golden Proportion).”
Invited to participate in the exhibition Speed Up organized by the Swiss Sports Museum of Basel, Switzerland in 2004, Ho Siu-kee showed an intriguing work entitled “Sit/Stand/Lie”. In the continuity of previous investigations about the perception of his own body in its relation with the physical environment, trying to reach a deeper knowledge of his own Self, Siu-kee proposes a sober, ascetic mapping of three basic postures. In some way, Siu-kee uses a stroboscopic procedure, a reference to Marcel Duchamp’s “Le Nu descendant l’Escalier” or to the early photographic essays that decomposed simple movements, giving, in their succession, the illusion of motion and velocity, thus leading to the cinematographic technique. The eyes of the viewer unconsciously follow the Sit/Stand/Lie directions, ascending, descending, in a dynamic interaction with the art work. The impression of motion and speed bursts in energetic pulses in the viewer’s brain and mind, the visual perception substantiates the concept of speed.
Metaphysical notions emanate from some of the metaphors Ho Siu-kee creates to convey his ideas and beliefs. In his book The Perceptual Body published in 2003, Ho Siu-kee comments his artistic itinerary. Along his studies and realizations, influenced both by the Chinese myth of the origin of the Universe and the latest scientific theories of our time, mixing Tao principles with the a-priories of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, Ho Siu-kee tries to find a rational explanation for our perceptual body and its most elementary behavior. How he succeeds to do it through his dreaming machines remains mysterious. A charge of poetic energy remains encapsulated in unforgettable images of movements in slow motion, their repetition provoking a hypnotic state of ecstasy, a deep aesthetic experience.
Josette Mazzella di Bosco Balsa is Member of IAAC: International Association of Art Critics