在這段不安的時期，恐懼、焦慮與迷茫充斥著各人的生活。馬琼珠、何倩彤、文美桃三位香港藝術家把各自面對的情緒抽絲剝繭，將具體事件化作成抽象且具詩意，並更接近核心的碎片，呈現在觀眾面前。

Fear, anxiety, confusion – these everyday emotions stirred by the current circumstances have brought three Hong Kong artists, Ivy MA, HO Sin Tung, and MAN Mei To, together for their first joint exhibition.

她們首度合作的聯展《字裡行間》於2020年9月5日至10月10日在安全口畫廊開放。三位藝術家的視覺風格皆低調而素淨，為是次展覽完成的新作品媒介涵蓋繪畫、雕塑與錄像，亦不約而同地大量取材或啟發自電影文本。

The group exhibition “The Spaces Between the Words Are Almost Infinite”, presented by Gallery EXIT, opens from 5 September to 10 October 2020. The artists showcase new works in forms of drawings, sculptures, videos that are inspired by borrowed and fragmented materials from various film sources. These works have channeled sentiments of fear and pain abstractly and poetically. 

馬琼珠的一組繪畫《吸血鬼》、《新女性》和《迷魂記》把經典電影中具強烈感情的雋永形象放大、複印、拆解，在其上覆蓋繪畫的刻痕和金箔，既是引用也是重塑。《那星》以真金打造出五顆被摺了角的五角星，陷於牆身之中，既具律動的節奏但也動彈不得，牽引出大國國旗的靈魂。《沙丘》為一組兩件的「攝影」作品，藝術家藉著擷取和裁剪現成影象、褪去色彩，政府官員整齊地群坐和群站的畫面被置於如像荒漠的灰色中，讓我們以嶄新的目光審視新聞圖片。巨幅畫作《七頭》源自藝術家在街頭上的經歷，警察以黑色警棍猛烈敲擊的巨響纏擾著她，逼使她把警棍放大至肉身的尺寸，供她在繪畫的過程中與它對恃和搏鬥。它的堅硬和橫蠻對應著散落地上《乖乖》玉米脆條的輕巧零碎。馬琼珠的最新作品在沉重與輕盈之間，造型簡約卻從未放棄作品的複雜性。

Ivy MA amplifies in the drawing series “Nosferatu, New Women and Vertigo” the emotions and imagery extracted from classic films, reconstructing the movies with new looks and meanings. The selected scenes were magnified, copied, and disassembled, with the surfaces patched with notches and gold foil. “Five Stars” are five folded five-pointed stars made of gold, resembling the presence of the national flag. Embedded in the gallery wall, the golden stars are in a dynamic form yet trapped in complete stillness. “Sand Dune” is a set of two images appropriated from existing images of government officials in a formal setup. MA cropped and immersed the images in an ashen tone, allowing the audience to interpret the news imagery from another perspective.  In “Seven Objects”, MA addresses in the large scale drawing her distress of encountering the violent banging sound of police batons on the street. The black batons were enlarged to human size on paper as an act of confrontation throughout the painting process. In contrary to the stern and ruthlessness of a baton, the scattered scraps of puffcorn in “Be Good” is fragmented and weightless. The new works of MA are minimal in form and yet meticulously expressed with a juxtaposition between a sense of weight and lightness. 

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文美桃的雕塑作品《扒手》顧名思義，啟發自布烈遜的《扒手》，底座承托著一雙兩頭生長的手臂，複製扒手的手腕尋索間與得手後的對比，在得失之間覓取平衡。《案發現場—腳》與《誰是殺手》皆來自希治閣的電影《奪命狂兇》，前者為雕塑作品，捕捉電影中菜市場無由來蹦出一隻腳的一幕，讓日常的場景突然變成詭異的案發現場，後者為一組五件的攝影作品，平靜的海面出現肢體載浮載沉，既孤絕又自由。電影與攝影皆為平面，但文美桃卻時常以身體感官推進創作思路，身體殘肢或病變畸異的元素也是過往在醫學博物館《像是動物園(二)》展覽的延伸。錄像《逃生門》中搖曳的大樹也仿似在與她去年的個展《沉積暗湧》對話，為展場開出另一扇窗。

Inspired by Robert Bresson’s film with the same title, MAN Mei To explores in “Pickpocket” the theme of loss and gain. The sculpture replicates the arms of a pocket-picker, in which they have been merged and sprouted from the same base. Its form depicts the hand movement during the act of stealing – the action of pulling out and inserting the hand with the stolen goods back into the pocket. Her other set of works “Crime Scene – Leg” and “Who is Murderer” were both inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s film “Frenzy”. “Crime Scene – Leg” is a sculptural piece that captures the film’s surreal scene of a human leg suddenly appearing at the food market, which immediately transforms the scene of ordinary life into a crime scene. “Who is Murderer” is a series of five photography works of body parts drifting along tranquil waves, evoking a sense of liberation.  Additionally, MAN has been incorporating elements of amputated stumps and pathological illness in her works since the 2018 group exhibition “Zoo as Metaphor 2” at The Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences. She employs sensual bodily experience in films and photographic imagery, a medium often perceived as flat and two-dimensional. The large swaying tree in her work “Exit” opens a new gateway from the exhibition space. The tree also echoes with her solo exhibition “Sediment and Undercurrent” in 2019. 

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何倩彤的最新作品全與等待的情緒有關。畫作《割腕時聽的音樂》和《明天永遠沒有來》把她在等待時不斷重覆聆聽的樂曲化成靜默的樂譜繪畫，過於熟悉的文本變成陌生的符碼，有聲被壓起無聲。《魔術師走了之後》描繪了一個被魔術師剖開的女人被擱置在現場的畫面。《時間是他的玩具》和《病是恆久忍耐》則以藥丸為題，取材自比利・懷特的電影《控方證人》，導演以被排列成陣的藥丸交代時間流逝，藥丸本身就是一種有關時間的律令，異常細小卻兇猛劇烈。一組三個屏幕的䤸像作品《晚星》大量搜集不同電影中在黑暗裡瞥見光明的畫面，配以藝術家在失眠的晚上以鐳射筆輕撫她目光所及之處，並在黑暗裡等待一則電話訊息的綠光的畫面，發光的點與線趨近供人冥想的熒幕保護裝置。

HO Sin Tung addresses in her works the sentiment of waiting and longing. “Music To Cut Wrist To” and “Tomorrow Never Came” are works on paper transformed into a drawing of sheet music from a piece of music she repeatedly listened to during the time of waiting. The familiar discourse is conveyed into alien symbols, suppressed into resonant silence. “There Is no Magic” depicts the scene of a woman being dissected and abandoned by a magician on site. Both “Time Is His Toy” and “Patient” are paper works inspired by a scene from Billy Wilder’s film “Witness for the Prosecution”. It is a sequence of stacked pills, implying the passage of time. Pills symbolize the law of time, small yet deadly. “Full Dark, No Stars” is a three-channel video installation with scenes of gleaming light in darkness from various film sources, which is mixed with the artist’s footages of laser-pointed beams that her sight leads during sleepless nights. Meanwhile, the artist anticipates in the dark for messages to flash on the mobile screen. Much like the meditative screensaver imagery, the dots and lines of the green light glows luminously. 

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展覽在沒有明確策展框架底下讓藝術家自由生成作品，喃喃自語到末了卻是氣息相近。展覽名稱“The Spaces Between the Words Are Almost Infinite”本為史派克鍾斯電影《觸不到的她》中的電影對白，當承載著大量訊息和情緒的字詞之間的間距被無限拉長，藝術家就在那個空無的地方寫下她們的註腳​
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The exhibited artworks were created without the restraint of a curatorial framework, yet the completed works come together synchronized. The exhibition title, “The Spaces Between the Words Are Almost Infinite” is a quote from Spike Jonze’s “Her”. It describes the ever-expanding textual space that is loaded with information and emotions. The artists thereafter fill in between with footnotes of their own.​

《字裡行間》​
“The Spaces Between the Words Are Almost Infinite”​
Date: 2020.9.5 –10.10​
Time: Tuesday to Saturday, 11:00 –18:00​
Venue:​
Gallery EXIT​
香港 香港仔田灣興和街25號大生工業大廈3樓​
3/F, 25 Hing Wo Street, Tin Wan, Aberdeen, Hong Kong​
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圖片由安全口畫廊與藝術家提供​
Courtesy of Gallery EXIT and the Artists