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September 2012
MANAMA
CAPITAL
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CULTURE
2012
CAPITAL
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ARAB
CULTURE
2012
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September
Art Calendar
Howie Tsui: Radiant Specters
Frey Norris Contemporary & Modern, San Francisco, CA
6 September - 27 October
Frey Norris Contemporary & Modern, San Francisco, CA
6 September - 27 October
Frey Norris Contemporary & Modern is pleased to present Radiant Specters, an exhibition of works on paper and sculpture by Canadian artist Howie Tsui. In this exhibition, Tsui resurrects the demons, ghosts, and nightmares of the past, but filters everything he finds through a lens of child-like amusement. Combining imagery from Buddhist Hell scrolls, ancient cosmology, traditional Chinese landscape painting, Edo-period Japanese woodblock erotica, and contemporary anime, his ink wash drawings teem with macabre and grotesque characters. In compositions arranged around narrative logic, as opposed to a linear sense of space, warriors confront vampires, ghosts and corpses converse, Kawaii princesses and Shoguns abound, and episodes from the artist’s own memories commingle with legends. Each image is compelling, not overwhelming, thanks to Tsui’s skillful draughtsmanship, similar to that of Bay Area street art hero Barry McGee. Like visual mash-ups of the most exciting moments taken from each episode, these complicated pictures delight in the act of storytelling itself, without ever fully unspooling any one specific yarn.
Born in Hong Kong and raised in Canada, Tsui absorbed influences from both Eastern and Western canons of art history before developing a contemporary pop-surrealist style, creating dreamy, idiosyncratic scenarios akin to those produced by Marcel Dzama or Amy Cutler. Although primarily interested in character-driven plots, his drawings also include distinctive trees, land-masses, and architecture that create a rich backdrop for unfolding drama. Works like Forest Romp or Tengu’s World literally layer scene over scene, ink wash character over character, including a cauldron of tormented demons, a man pinned to a tree by arrows with his face flayed open, a black mass of disembodied arms, a ghost on a kite, and many more. Both pieces are true panoramas, the focus of these compositions is an overall sense of simultaneous, episodic activity, activity. Tsui’s vivid animation brings the past to life in a truly contemporary, hyperkinetic, action-saturated style, and demonstrates how truly relevant, and entertaining, old fears, anxieties, and wives tales still remain.
Howie Tsui received a BFA with Honors from the University of Waterloo, and has received the Corel Endowment Fund for the Arts Award, the Joseph S. Stauffer Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts, and the RBC Emerging Artist Award. He has had solo exhibitions at the Agnes Etherington Art Center in Kingston, and at many galleries in Ottawa, Toronto, and Winnipeg, and his work has been included in group exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Copenhagen, and Sydney, among others. His work has been reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Ottawa Citizen, Border Crossings, and Canadian Art, among many others. This is his first exhibition with Frey Norris.
Born in Hong Kong and raised in Canada, Tsui absorbed influences from both Eastern and Western canons of art history before developing a contemporary pop-surrealist style, creating dreamy, idiosyncratic scenarios akin to those produced by Marcel Dzama or Amy Cutler. Although primarily interested in character-driven plots, his drawings also include distinctive trees, land-masses, and architecture that create a rich backdrop for unfolding drama. Works like Forest Romp or Tengu’s World literally layer scene over scene, ink wash character over character, including a cauldron of tormented demons, a man pinned to a tree by arrows with his face flayed open, a black mass of disembodied arms, a ghost on a kite, and many more. Both pieces are true panoramas, the focus of these compositions is an overall sense of simultaneous, episodic activity, activity. Tsui’s vivid animation brings the past to life in a truly contemporary, hyperkinetic, action-saturated style, and demonstrates how truly relevant, and entertaining, old fears, anxieties, and wives tales still remain.
Howie Tsui received a BFA with Honors from the University of Waterloo, and has received the Corel Endowment Fund for the Arts Award, the Joseph S. Stauffer Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts, and the RBC Emerging Artist Award. He has had solo exhibitions at the Agnes Etherington Art Center in Kingston, and at many galleries in Ottawa, Toronto, and Winnipeg, and his work has been included in group exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Copenhagen, and Sydney, among others. His work has been reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Ottawa Citizen, Border Crossings, and Canadian Art, among many others. This is his first exhibition with Frey Norris.
Forest Romp, 2009
Ink, acrylic and Chinese paint pigments on mulberry paper. 37 x 125 in. 94 x 318 cm