The exhibition continues Fang’s collaboration with the gallery following her participation in last year’s Wong Chuk Hang Roof Video Party, a group exhibit of 16 video artists’ works curated by Carol Yinghua Lu. As the title suggests, Fang’s latest exhibition explores the surprising symmetries that exist between an individual possessed by amorous feelings and a person compelled by creative impulses.

Fang’s three-part multi-media installation at Pékin Fine Arts in Wong Chuk Hang includes two related video works and a new, text-based LED installation. In Automatic Happening (dual-channel video, 29’, 2010) the main character stands in a half-empty space holding an array of random objects, busying herself by assigning strange tasks to each item. She drifts from food preparation to object decorating, all to no obvious end or purpose. She works incessantly, without finishing anything, her face hidden behind the pink motorcycle helmet that protects her against risk of injury from household work. As the critic and curator Chen Tong observes, “This work does not intend to ridicule the tedious nature of housework, but attempts to blur the limits between the act of representation (artistic labor) and what is being represented (housework). Therefore the pointlessness of the action becomes the consciousness of the artist.” (Home, or Studio? Chen Tong)

In Lovers Are Artists II (single channel video, 11’50”, 2012) the scene shifts to another moment in a similar space. Wearing an off-white dress, the main character has become a woman (and artist) in love. Alone, she keeps herself busy by painting and incorporating food-related materials into her art. About this persona, Fang Lu writes: “Is she a builder or a destroyer? There is no clearly defined role for her.” Continuing her exploration of this character’s interior world, Fang’s new LED installation On the Sea (2013) transforms fragments from the artist’s novel into an LED light display.

“In a pragmatic world like ours, anyone who allows him- or herself to fall in love is adventurous, since entering such a state means to be consumed, confused and isolated,” Fang Lu states. “This is not unlike the artist’s experience as he/she works alone in the studio. The imaginary character of ‘lover’ and the persona of ‘artist’ co-exist via absurd actions invented in my videos, so that they can interact creatively, sharing the same physical space, building experience from premeditated ‘accidents’ that happen in a lovers’ space that is also called the artist’s studio.”

As M+ Curator and critic Pauline Yao writes: “This crafty layering of improvisation, performance and documentation lends Fang’s practice overlapping qualities that neither can be nor wish to be fully resolved. In this context we can only continually witness the ways in which the body is a conduit for movement and gesture, and how the camera works as a tool of interpretation—recording, revealing, showing what we know but at the same time subsuming it within the murky sea of our surrounding reality.” (Fang Lu – Between the Staged and the Unstaged, Pauline Yao).

The title of the exhibition, “Somewhere in the center, I created you”, is by the same name as one of the series of drawings of Kishon. In the Chinese title “Xu Mi” refers to “The Mount Sumeru”, which is the center of the world and the dwelling place of the gods in Hindu and Buddhist cosmologies. The Buddhist word “Sumeru” echoes the word Shechina (Shekhinah) in Hebrew, which in the Jewish tradition also represents the feminine aspect of God and the presence of God in a place or an occasion. The title of the film therefore takes its name from Shechina.

Shechina is a work about pain and healing in the modern era. It is a 76-minute film produced by Fang Lu and Arie Kishon in the last two years. The production of the work takes place in Tel Aviv, Guangzhou, Brooklyn and Beacon. The film is comprised both of documentary and fictional parts, intertwined throughout the entire piece. In many traditions it is argued that we are in an age of darkness, and that salvation is yet to come. The world is in a state of lack, because the feminine aspect of God is in exile. And so, God, the masculine, is always yearning for the Shechina, the feminine, to reappear and assume its rightful place in the universe, unifying both male and female and bringing peace and harmony to the world. Based on this primordial duality, this separation to male and female in the spiritual realm, the film makes up the fictional characters Hechina (cast by artist Xu Tan) and Shechina (cast by Mihal Goldstein) as the male and female aspects of God. Hechina dwells in an empty building outside of the suburbs, between where the city ends and forest begins. From this special location he receives testimonies of peoples’ suffering. By the presence and grace of Shechina, he can engage in a creative act to aid people in restoring balance.

Arie Kishon’s exploration of reality beyond the five senses, either through scripture from across the globe, personal experience, or by relating to the new, emerging science of BioGeometry, serve as the background for the creation of the Diamond Wave Chair exhibiting in Gallery II. The chair can be used either as a single piece, or as an ensemble, providing several combinations utilizing the same design—two chairs can be put together to form a day bed, while four pieces can be joined together to form a whole king size bed. For the purpose of this installation, this chair is used for the person sitting in it to integrate the energy of the space into their own system. The physical attributes of the chair are in accordance with design elements that work towards maximizing beneficial, life sustaining energy.

Also showing on the second floor are Kishon’s drawings and paintings on rice paper. The abstract paintings and drawings deal with the realm that exists in the gap between physical reality and its divine source. One example for such a phenomenon, that of existence in between these two realms is language, which is being used in the paintings titled Come, it’s the end of the world (2020), and All the night I can afford (2021). The line drawings are four groups of seven drawings, titled Somewhere in the center, I made you; Somewhere in the center, I formed you; Somewhere in the center, I created you; Somewhere in the center, I stilled you. The repetition of titles is meant to be like mantra, that resonates with the repetition of the lines in the drawing. These drawing are the process of a meditative journey that the artist is engaged in and invites viewers to be a part of.

— Text originally released by Pékin Fine Arts, May 2013