INTRODUCING // LEE KIT

B
O
T
H

I
M
A
G
E
S
:

O
S
A
G
E

G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,

H
O
N
G

K
O
N
G

The Artful Dodger
Exploring what is said in what has already been spoken
BY STEPHANIE BAILEY
I FIRST MET Lee Kit in 2009 after viewing
his exhibition Someone Singing and
Calling Your Name at Osage Soho in
Hong Kong. My Cantonese mother, who
helped me translate the transcript of our
subsequent interview, kept laughing and
calling him cheeky because he evaded
my questions so artfully. This was to
be expected: Kits work is often irreverent.
In a 2008 video, An interview by Miss
Petra Chan, he sits silently through an
interview as a forceful female reporter
asks him questions. But there is something
insightful in his irreverence, a practice
that he says is driven by the idea that
absolutely everything is a readymade.
Kits 2009 show cut to the unseen core
of Hong Kong cultureits deeper, darker,
more vulnerable side, nearly invisible
amid the frenetic pace that defnes
contemporary life in this hyper-capitalist
city. The exhibition opened with two
paintings on cardboard; one has the Nivea
logo painted on it and the other features
the word Jonsons, a knockoff of the Johnson
& Johnson logo, rendered a darker shade
colored lines on unstretched canvases,
proposed as functional elements, to
pillowcases printed with isolated lyrics
from various songs (I think youre crazy,
maybe)into live, reactive spaces.
This is a style best illustrated by Kits
2011 installation at Art Basels Statement
section, where he used the venue as a
literal showroom transformed by fabric
and pillowcase paintings into an
Ikea-like domestic presentation about
how to live economically in a shoebox
space, with each item indexed in a
so-called catalogue. Inhabiting the gray
zone between abrasion and decorum,
the installation delivered a prickly albeit
tongue-in-cheek gesture in pastel
colors, soft fabrics, and poetic, abstract
one-liners. It also served as a subtle and
artful use of space that still seemed
genuinely personal despite the critical
intervention, as if this really were
someones living quarters in an art fair
where, as in Hong Kong, space is the
hottest commodity.
When I ask Kit about his representation
of Hong Kong at the upcoming Venice
Biennale, he says little, as he tends not
to plan his projects too much in advance, so
as to keep an element of spontaneity.
This leads to the subject of his formative
years in Fo Tan, an industrial neighborhood
in the hills of Hong Kongs New Territo-
ries. Representing Hong Kong in Venice
is a momentous occasion for Kit. It will
be one more thing hell have in common
with his contemporaries Leung Chi Wo
and Tozer Pak, who also represented
Hong Kong at the Biennale. They were
among the frst artist residents of Fo Tan,
62 MODERN PAINTERS MAY 2013 BLOUINARTINFO.COM
of blue than the background. In one room,
Kit presented a re-creation of a karaoke
parlor with Skeeter Daviss The End of
the World playing, the lyrics shown on a
looped video cutting between a London
park and forlorn scenes of Kit seated at
a table by a small window, isolated by
shadow. In the other room, he showed a
four-part video installation, each screen
devoted to a particular itemNivea
products again, or a cup of espressowith
the objects name spelled out on-screen
as if for karaoke lyrics, like an invitation
for the viewer to repeat the words.
Following that exhibition, Kit and
I talked about popular songs as
readymades and karaoke bars (or bars
in general) as readymade situations
for feelings and experiences to perhaps
be played out as a sort of social
brainwashing. Today, he says, he sees
that show as an important moment
because all the components really came
together, and I saw the potential of
what I was doing. In other words, how
to compose objectsfrom paintings of
where an art scene formed in 2001 after
eight artists from the Chinese University,
where Kit also studied, sought a space
after their college studios burned down.
Though Kit left for Taipei late last year,
he remembers the period at Fo Tan as
incredibly productive. We always spent our
time in the studio, he says. And when we
began taking part in exhibitions, we started
thinking about art more on a social level.
This was also the period when he developed
the hand-painted cloth pieces that have
become a central element of his work, using
them as tablecloths, picnic blankets, or
decorative wall hangings evoking bedsheets
folded and hung on a clothesline. At frst
I was concerned with the form of painting,
Kit recalls. Then I started to realize that
painting is a frame and the most important
thing about the frame is the mind-set,
he says. Of course, I still think of
myself as a painter frst and foremost,
but from that perspective, making work is
always more about the process. O
S
A
G
E

G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
BLOUINARTINFO.COM MAY 2013 MODERN PAINTERS 63
Still from
Fragments
some love
songs, 2009,
shown in Kits
exhibition
Someone
Singing and
Calling Your
Name.
Digital video,
6 min., 30 sec.
OPPOSITE, FROM TOP:
Lee Kit at Art
Basel, 2011.
Installation view
of How to Set Up
an Apartment
for Johnny at Art
Basel, 2011.
Kits process entails exploring the art
object as an element in social situations
and as a political statement. In 2006 he
turned Hong Kong nonproft space Para/
Site into a working caf where he and
fellow artists, wearing T-shirts declaring
my favorite waste of time, served free
food and drinks to guests.
It is at intersections like these, between
the evocativein its clear-cut utterances
of political awarenessand the provocative,
that Kits work is most potent. At a
December 2005 protest for democracy in
Hong Kong, he used his abstract fabric
paintings as protest signs because, he says,
there was too much noise, which to me
was out of focus. He thought then, If
I dont have anything to say I can use
my painting, a simple patterned cloth, as
a banner. Protesters asked if he intended
a statement in his paintings, and he
said no, he recounts. But actually, my
work is quite political, he says, laughing.
Its really quite simple!
If you were born in Hong Kong in
1978 and grew up during the lead-up to
the 1997 handover to China, political
expression is indeed crucial. In that
period, much was made about the Sino-
British declarations Basic Law, ratifed
in 1990 as a mini constitution, that
essentially protects until 2047 the
political rights established in Hong Kong
under British colonialism and the
infuences of 1980s market capitalism.
This is something everyone in Hong
Kong is aware of, no less its artists.
In the end, maybe Kits responses
are not so much about dodging questions
as about stating things clearly. When I
ask why he uses the tablecloth, Kit replies,
If people ask, is this a realist painting?
I can say, Yes, it is a realist painting:
Its a tablecloth. If they say, Its also very
abstract, I can say, Yes, its a pattern.
Just like everything is a ready-
made? Yes, he says, with deceiving
transparency. MP
Kits work cuts to the unseen core of Hong Kong culture
its deeper, darker, more vulnerable side.