Cheung Tsz Hin: a sunbeam lent to us too briefly
Cheung Tsz Hin’s compositions explore the mixed emotions that arise from the artist’s memories and associations with people and events throughout his lifetime. Everyday objects, fleeting scenes and encounters provide spaces to observe the ever-changing landscape of the mind. Through painting, Cheung’s emotional starting points undergo transformations, reconstructions and even inversions until the layers of meaning abstract themselves both conceptually and visually.
Beginning with the application of thin layers of paint, Cheung carves space in his process for reflection - a necessary element for interpreting his own feelings before transforming them. This strategy was born from the artist’s own personal experiences with life, death, and separation, and became a way to visually process emotion in a way that words alone could not. Through his paintings, these memories undergo a continuous transformation of recontextualization and fragmentation; those that grow unreachable manifest as voids. Visual elements become methods of dialogue between the artist and his psyche.
Cheung’s intuitive color palettes strike a balance between soft and saturated, with the spectrum of color representing the intensity and certainty of an emotion. In homes of the void, vibrant, neon yellow light pours like water from a pendant lamp, spilling into the corners of the composition and bursting through objects like overgrowth. Light, subconsciously, becomes a central object in his works. In his daydreams, the way it changes can drastically alter a scene or memory. Illumination becomes not only a device to create depth within the paintings, but a tool to make clearer a passage through the emotions he navigates. The exhibition’s title, a sunbeam lent to us too briefly, is an ode to the ephemerality of this passage, particularly as it relates to the artist’s own relationships and memory. The line is drawn from The God of Small Things, a novel which explores the significance of small actions.
In veil on juxtaposed scenes, blocks of color and light suggest a forest clearing just beyond the trees, which can only be reached by going “through the woods” - a common metaphor that alludes to the often difficult processing of emotion necessary to move forward. With the background fading to dark, layered greys, we see that this path is not purely linear. What lies on the other side of the light is complex, a void dotted with fragments of color in a horizon that is nuanced.
When processing memories, we gain new tools and perspectives from which to view them. Similarly, Cheung’s multi-layering process pays homage to an ever-growing repertoire of resources with which to make sense of the world around us, particularly within the present moment. This visualization of memory is a deeply personal, tangible record of those that fade or transform with time.
Cheung Tsz Hin (b.1987, Hong Kong) obtained his Bachelor of Integrated BBA (minor in Fine Arts) from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2010, and a Master of Fine Arts in Taiwan in 2014. Cheung has taken part in an artist in residency programme held by Listhus SES in Iceland in 2018. His works have been featured in solo and group exhibitions in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Iceland, including Phantasmagoria, LBF Contemporary, London (2024); moments in layered motion, Contemporary by Angela Li, Hong Kong (2024); shivering glow, I shiver and glow, Contemporary by Angela Li, Hong Kong (2023); confluence of voice, Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre (2023); spinelessly planting, Contemporary by Angela Li, Hong Kong (2022); the garden I still vaguely remember, Contemporary by Angela Li, Hong Kong (2021); Ólafsfjörður: Phase 2, Sansiao Gallery, Hong Kong (2019); Stundum, Listhus Artspace, Ólafsfjörður, Iceland (2018); No Neverland, Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre, Hong Kong (2017); Art as Social Interaction—Hong Kong/ Taiwan Exchange, The Pier-2 Art Center, B7 Warehouse, Taiwan (2015).
