Sculpting Perception – the Works of HO Siu-kee

Fiona, Wong Lai-ching

It was a warm winter’s day.  The ceiling of the zinc-roofed studio appeared to be more than ten feet high.  Natural light from outside was absorbed by such cavernous space and became dimmer and dimmer as it penetrated inside the studio.  The dimness then turned into the paleness of florescent light.  In that tranquil interior, there stood more than ten metal objects, each bearing an extensive void as if waiting to be occupied by the human body at midnight - when man and object find each other to set in motion.  This was my first encounter of Ho Siu-kee’s work.  Later, we happened to work together at Hong KongArtSchool for ten years.  Those ten years had given me a chance to understand the correlation between my friend and his works.

The visit more than 10 years ago did not leave any photos for reference.[1] This, however, has made the impression even more vivid. It is amazing that people sense the world with their own body and construct the reality with their own rules.

The first joke the Creator plays on human beings is to let them see an upside-down image of the world at birth. Human beings learn to revert this image with their intellect to match what they see and where they are. While people may think the brain is the authority in constructing reality, the changes in the body at different stages of life quietly occupy their consciousness and alter this perception. From the desire to expand outward during the prime of life to the feeling of powerless when one is old and weak, just when human beings keep matching the world with their bodies, they also keep testing the reality and the value that they construct. These experiences which could be very emotive in the beginning become a mundane process through life that repeats itself day after day.

The greatness of art lies in its ability to arouse these common experiences and to make further exploration and re-reading. The works of Ho Siu-kee take the bodily experience in daily life as a starting point to examine the existing system with a determination comparable to crossing theRed Sea– through his works he tries to find out new orders, revive what has been forgotten and preview what still cannot be seen.

The three-dimensional nature of sculpture gives this medium the power to transform and represent hidden reality in form of an object. Venus of Willendorf, the stone statue created 25,000 years ago[2], not only shows a plump female body, but also shows the ancient desire to prolong life through reproduction. The will to fight death is an abstract notion. It is similar to our perception of the world and can only be released through a medium. To Ho Siu-kee, the body is the starting point of this process.

At first, Ho Siu-kee made use of his own body as a subject of experience. Through other media, he transformed subjective perceptual experience into concepts that can be interpreted objectively. Thus began a series of exploration in art. When these perceptual experiences involved coherent physical activities, video became a natural medium of expression. But Ho Siu-kee is not contented with using video as a purely recording device. Through the juxtaposition of people and objects, he allowed the act of video-recording to intervene in a new role. The innovative use of this medium adds a certain texture to his works and provides a new interpretation for the relationship between human beings and the media[3]. To take such body activities exclusively as a form of art and classify these works as “performance” is obviously a misunderstanding.

Sometimes, these physical experiences are frozen by Ho Siu-kee to become still objects. The training in traditional sculpture-making in his early years not only enabled Ho Siu-kee to master a set of concrete language in three-dimensional art form, actual hands-on experience had also given strong revelation to Ho Siu-kee’s direction of artistic practice. Once, Ho Siu-kee worked on a wood carving. Scraps of wood fell onto the ground, forming patterns like the radiation of energy. “This is it!” Ho Siu-kee exclaimed. In the process of sculpture-making, the person was fully occupied in sculpting the form and had merged with the object without noticing his own existence. After a round of intense body activity, the person took a rest and looked away from the work. He suddenly found that the scraps of wood on the ground had recorded the body activity just now. Instantly, he was aware that he and the object had separated. This separation also revealed the connection of human being and object a moment before. This awareness caused the person to start looking around and observe the world. The experience of sculpture-making has already existed around us in our life experience. But the acquisition of this sudden enlightenment has to rely on the artist’s special perceptive power which is accumulated through his/her long-term concentration on the surroundings.

The sculptor has to follow the grain of wood during the carving process – this understanding of and response to the material is part of creation. This unique irregularity of natural material is often regarded as a limitation. Art, however, elevates such limitation from reality to spirituality. Long experience in sculpture- making gives Ho Siu-kee a deep understanding of limitation. His works which combine sculptural objects with body gesture are responses in ‘extension’ versus ‘limitation’. This extension does not specifically point at any destination. But it covertly discloses human being’s desire for ‘searching’. Artistic practice is the autobiography that an artist writes with his whole life. It is also a way to extend the constrained body. Ho Siu-kee understands sculpture as an extended experience of the ‘thing’ before and after it is formed. The ‘thing’ becomes a medium of many types of experience, thus pushes sculpture to the exploration between ‘thing’ and ‘non-thing’.

 t the end of the article “Things” and “Human” and “the World”[4], Ho Siu-kee introduces himself as a sculptor. His creation has always related to sculpture. It is by no accident that he calls his works sculptures.

For the observer, receiving enlightenment from an artwork is a very pleasant experience. It is equally fascinating to find the presence of the artist. This presence is the soul of the work that reveals an irreplaceable nature, a concern for human beings. In Ho Siu-kee’s work, this presence not only points to his physical body, but is also a quality of himself as a subject of perception.

In his early years, Ho Siu-kee had a strong self-consciousness of his own body which was akin to some sort of narcissism. This narcissism was suppressed yet relieved through his artistic work. After many years of physical practice, his human body has shaped a strong sculptural form which nearly unified with the “thing” in his works. In a series of rigorous self-disciplinary acts, this body drives away consciousness with repeated actions, takes prohibition and self-constraint as training, embodies the sense of being with acts akin to self-torture. It seems that he is contented with the constraint of the reality, but in fact, he tries hard to suppress the natural call that is restless and about to cause trouble.

In recent years, the expressiveness of the body in Ho Siu-kee’s works is gradually replaced by the imagery of things. Sometimes this body is fully entrusted to the sculpture, just like returning to the traditional self-portraiture. In fact, he wants to fade out from the role of an expresser to an observer and take a fresh look at the relationship between the projected self and the environment.[5] From tailor-made body cages to rectangular architectural space; from allowing people’s imagination to participate to inviting them to have first-hand experience,[6] the evolution of the works shows a relief from resistance to acceptance. This embodies the evolution of thought as the artist progresses. Metal softens from a medium for constructing forms to the guidance of light. The mutual harmonization of ‘thing’ and ‘quality’ shows that the artist is entering a new course of development.[7] Writing has become a fellow traveler in this course of development.

To watch Ho Siu-kee’s works, one must also read his writing at the same time. He makes use of writing to demonstrate a self-rereading that is serious and exquisite. Visual art can provide an angle beyond logical thinking while words can break the superstition and taboo of art, so that reason and sensation can reconnect. Works of art is a presentation through imagery. Ho Siu-kee tries to convey complicated concepts into a kind of imagery through writing. Thus he creates a space for playing with reason and sensation. This virtual space, like the void that he constructs in his works, is receiving an unknown entering.

In recent years, Ho Siu-kee focuses on the study of Heidegger’s philosophy and tries to get inspiration through constant rereading. Every time I gaze at Ho Siu-kee’s sculptures, I sense a touch of solitude in the abandoned space that was once filled. Maybe the silence of the thing and the movement of man is, as he says in his article[8], the portraiture of the mortality in human beings.

Fiona, Wong Lai-ching is Lecturer of Hong Kong Art School