安全口畫廊呈現曼樂婷個展「他們的記憶」，展出駐香港法國藝術家曼樂婷的一系列新作品。曼樂婷喜歡研究復古別緻的設計，對歷史建築有獨特的情懷，多年來一直研究這座她所居住的城市的過去，也很擅長描繪城市的人造元素和自然元素之間相互交織的關係。這一次，她探索新界的鄉村，收集當地村⺠的故事、瀕臨消失的生活方式，以獨特的敘事講述關於香港的故事。
Gallery EXIT presents ‘Their Memories’ by Daphné MANDEL, featuring a new series of works by the Hong Kong-based French artist. Positioning herself as an observer, for many years MANDEL has been engaging with her adopted city’s past. Exploring villages in the New Territories and collecting stories from local villagers whose lifestyle is on the brink of disappearing, she explores the themes of pattern and repetition versus singularity and uniqueness through the narratives of rural life and industrial heritage.
Why it matters:
香港之於曼樂婷，是熟悉的又是超現實的，但最終保留的藝術家思維魔法中的那一座精緻城市。展覽透過鄉村生活和工業遺產的敘事，探討模式與重複性、個體與獨特性的主題。藝術家在鄉村的廢棄房屋中遊走時，經常找到在腐爛潮濕的結構中保存了數十年的照相簿，內裏的照片化成一片混集了棕、紅褐、粉紅和黃的色彩板塊。時間、物理變質、藝術家的介入與繪畫行為，將轉瞬即逝的圖像轉化為記憶之抽象化呈現。
Hong Kong to MANDEL is both familiar and surreal, but ultimately retains the exquisite city that embodies the magic of the artist’s mind. As the artist wanders around abandoned homes in rural villages, she often comes across photo albums that have survived several decades in a decaying and humid structure, the photographs within turned into a palette of browns, sepia, pinks and yellows. Time, material deterioration, the artist’s intervention and act of painting, transform the ephemeral images into the abstraction of a memory.
4 Highlights:
- 「他們的記憶」系列小畫作是取自正式家庭肖像、親友聚會場合、週末遠足和出國旅行的休閒照片的繪畫，構成了重複的形狀圖案、紅褐棕灰色調，喚起遺下鄉居及回憶的人們的生命循環。個體的故事在近距離仔細觀察下才變得清晰可辨。
- Upon entering the gallery, the viewer is greeted by a long row of small paintings from the Their Memories series. Seen from a distance, these paintings drawn from formal family portraits, photographs of casual friends and family gatherings and occasions, weekend excursions and travels abroad form a repetitive pattern of shapes, shades of sepia, browns and greys, evoking a cycle of lives of a people who have left their rural village homes and their memories behind. Only when scrutinised up close do the individual stories become discernible.
- 《而風景沒有記憶》是藝術家解構鄉村棚屋的地籍測量記錄而成的抽象化形態拼貼，材料取自政府的土地測量記錄。其中一些房屋已被清拆，藝術家在這些廢棄房屋中發現的照片碎片象徵了其記憶。房屋結構的輪廓錯位、散落、破洞連連，有若墨跡或生命交叉的有機拼圖。同一片土地上，新的影像覆蓋了先前的影像，而風景並沒有記憶。
- ‘Landscapes Don’t Retain Memories’ is a deconstructed patchwork of abstract shapes from a cadastral survey of rural squatter villages, traced by the artist based on a government land survey. Some of these houses have already been demolished their memories are represented by fragments of photographs found by the artist inside these abandoned homes. The contours of the structures are displaced, scattered, perforated like splashes of ink or pieces of an organic puzzle of lives intersecting. New memories replace previous ones on the same land, yet landscapes don’t retain memories.
- 「工業製品」系列描繪了醬缸、卡板、液體容器和沙包，這些物件代表了鄉村裏仍在運作的傳統工業，自上世紀五十年代以來幾乎沒有變化。
- The Industrial Artefacts series illustrate soy pots, pallets, jerrycans and sand bags that represent the traditional industries still in operation in these villages, very much unchanged since the 1950s.
- 《唱片仍在唱盤上》反映了在香港邊緣矛盾且時代錯置的城市景觀，這些小小孤立地方、在瘋狂的發展項目中存活的古老香港建築和傳統的拼貼，藝術家在這些邊緣空間，尋找轉型中的城市鄉村景觀的痕跡和遺留物。
- A reflection on the paradoxical and anachronistic urbanscapes at the edges of Hong Kong, ‘The Record is Still on the Turntable’ is a collage of these small pockets where old Hong Kong architecture and traditions survive among frenetic development projects, along the margins and fringes, the spaces in between where the artist looks for traces and remnants of the city’s rural landscapes in transition.
Background: Artist
- 曼樂婷(法國，1975年生)自2008年以來一直在香港生活和工作。她於2000年在法國凡爾賽完成建築和城市規劃學位。曼樂婷探索既不屬於鄉村也不屬於城市的中介空間;這些邊緣空間都是位處香港邊緣的過渡風景。她的藝術作品融合了當代數碼支援和傳統觸覺技巧如繪畫和拼貼。這在概念上呼應了香港的城市美學:新與舊、傳統與現代、廢棄與精緻的並置。曼樂婷與Guy Bertrand共同執導了一部名為 《茶粿》的紀錄短片，講述了香港鄉村的秘密世界。
- Daphné MANDEL (French, b. 1975) has been living and working in Hong Kong since 2008. She completed her degree in architecture and urban planning in Versailles in 2000. MANDEL explores the in-between spaces that fall neither into the rural nor the urban. They are the fringes, the transitional landscapes at the edges of Hong Kong. Her artworks incorporate contemporary digital support and tactile traditional techniques, like painting and collage. This conceptually echoes Hong Kong’s urban aesthetic: one that is a juxtaposition of old and new, heritage and contemporary, derelict and polished. Her works are often infused with aesthetics of illusions, fantasies and poetry. Daphne Mandel co-directed with Guy Bertrand a short documentary film entitled Cha Guo that celebrates the hidden world of a Hong Kong rural village.
Final tips:
走進香港轉型中的鄉村景觀，重拾被遺忘的城市記憶。
Immersed yourself in Hong Kong’s rural landscapes, recapturing the memories of your city in the past.
曼樂婷《他們的記憶》｜Daphné MANDEL: Their Memories
Date:
2024.11.30 – 2025.1.25
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
Courtesy to Artists and Gallery EXIT