Autumn Newsletter🍂🍁
Mortality, exit ramps, office cubicles
Dear friends,
We’re feeling an energy shift in the city, paralleling the relief of those first temperate winds that signal the arrival of autumn. As travel channels open up again, the potential for cross-cultural exchange and visits from overseas artists, curators, and collectors glimmer on the horizon.
At PHD Group, we hosted our very first international artist: Sasaoka Yuriko, who flew in from Kyoto to install her solo exhibition at the gallery. Featuring fish-head dolls, embroidery paintings and an immersive video installation, “Planaria” grapples with mortality through an absurdist, carnivalesque lens. The artist herself describes the central video as a “birthday for death.” You can make an appointment to view the show here.
To learn more about the artist and the exhibition, you can read this wonderful profile by Enid Tsui for Post Magazine, and this Critic’s Pick written by Ophelia Lai for Artforum.
NEWS
Wong Kit Yi’s new video-essay and lecture-performance at FRONT International 2022: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art was featured in Art in America, Frieze, and Art Newspaper, among other publications.
Christopher K Ho’s major outdoor installation at Vancouver Art Gallery, “CX 889” (until October 16), was featured in ArtAsiaPacific’s September/October issue and in this essay written by Christopher DeWolf.
Miyagi prefecture’s ReBorn Art Festival, which aims to revitalize a region devastated by the 2011 earthquake, featured a video installation in an old Japanese bathhouse by Sasaoka Yuriko alongside works by Izumi Kato, Tetsuya Umeda, and OSGEMEOS.
PHD Group co-founder Ysabelle Cheung was featured in Prestige’s “40 Under 40” list for her work at the gallery.
Virtue Village’s solo exhibition was featured in an essay by Gabriel Lee, published in Daoju; co-founder Joseph Chen penned a column about the seminal documentary “Paris is Burning” for Post Magazine.
Zheng Mahler’s work on Lantau water buffaloes is included in UCCA Dune iteration of “Liquid Ground” (until February 19, 2023) and their ongoing research project on bats, commissioned by ifa, is now live on the museum’s digital platform.
UPCOMING PROJECTS
Yuko Mohri is one of the 80 artists included in the 14th edition of the Gwangju Biennale, titled “soft and weak like water.” The biennale will run from April 7 to July 9, 2023.
Christopher K Ho will be a McKinney Visiting Artist at the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design, Indiana University (January 2023); and artist in residence at Surf Point Foundation (August 2023).
In January 2023, Zheng Mahler will release the alpha version of a new interactive game project, expanding on their research for The Green Crab installation commissioned by the Singapore Art Museum.
Sasaoka Yuriko will participate in group show “Dream/Lands” at Kanagawa Kenmin Hall (December 28, 2022 - January 28, 2023).
RECOMMENDATIONS
Dylan DeRose, whose upcoming solo show opens November at the gallery, recommends:
Stalker (1979) dir. Andrei Tarkovsky; Playtime (1967) dir. Jacques Tati; Stranger Than Paradise (1984) dir. Jim Jarmusch.
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino; The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon; and Women in the Dunes by Kōbō Abe.
And we recommend this poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, published in the Winter 1997 issue of Paris Review.
Take care,
Ysabelle and Willem