Eye to Eye

Kai-Oi Jay Yung Traditional classical drawing has always sought draftsmanship geometry and symmetry of the form, whether figure or object, a rigorous representation through the lineaccuracy of ratios and precepts adhered towards harmony proportion perfection Kai-Oi Jay Yung has consistently referred to her drawings and paintings as 'doodles', means by which through line, pen, paint and ink, she can convey an idea as naturally as writing it. Abstract shapes and symbols become her own language. The 120+ portraits before you lay bare the artist's untrained hand in any learnt technique in drawing. As an artist Yung works prolifically usually across video, sculpture and installation art to live performance, deploying sound, moving image and materials to create large scale multi-sensory environments to be explored or live interactions with the unsuspecting participant viewer. Whatever the form though, people- their memories, lives, fears and desires are central to Yungs process. In recent projects, the portrait through quick line and ink has become a fascination for Yung as a guise to attain rare and exquisite time with the stranger. These drawings, humbly and sometimes crudely shaped and sifted, unintentionally aging or skew or misrepresenting the other demonstrate at once the impossibility of truth and the possibilities of perception. Sidelining all classical etiquette but as an exercise of seeking what is within the eyes of that person- who has surrendered him or herself to be quietly sat and focused upon for several minutes, is the artist's attempt to seek an inner truth from eye to hand and paperand to reveal both rhythms of the subject and her own inconsistencies. There is in fact an insufficiency, a vulnerability in the honesty of both unhewn face rendered and the attempt to render it as best as possible with only one's eye and want guiding each marked line. Some of these portraits were drawn in under one minute; on a jerky bus, university grounds, a smoky cafe, a shoeshop, a street stall, side of a dusty and busy road, . Some of these people were shopkeepers awaiting customers, shoppers bargaining for goods, students gathering in a parking lot, playing pool, bank tellers, pharmacists.. playing mahjong on the side walk, reading books in a bookshop. The conditions in which the artist created these images are far from conducive to a quiet attelier. Sometimes crouching on a side street in the rain, escaping being thrown out of a cafe, being jostled by ten school children, or rushing the marks before the subject changed their mind... the absurdity of such conditions is reflective on the artist's attempt to overcome these personal and intimate space en Haikou open air, to transgress the closure of one to another in the cityscape and to penetrate deeper if not for an instant. Drawing the people one by way was an intense connection of one set of eyes to another, sometimes the subject unable to retain eye contact, as if hiding oneself, self aware, giggling furiously, fidgeting, worried about what they would look like, as though the drawing would
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somehow be a truthful re-enactment of something shameful, terrible, unbearable, of seeing oneself through the eyes of the other or inability to recognise oneself would somehow erase oneself's very identity. The drawings are resultant of 85% of people approached. The artist chose to draw these people because for her Eye to Eye is a project for the inhabitants of the city. Each portrait represents a very succint and irreplacable point in time. It is insignificant what the portrait looked like in fact, for Yung, each is an offering to each individual, along with each image was a personal invitation to the exhibition, for each person a chance to see themselves in a different way and to bring them into the gallery, perhaps for the first time and perhaps for most who had not otherwise felt art had any place in their life. Within her means, within the context of this 4 day process-led residency and in line with her interests in the psychological and physical exploration of blockage points within the individual, Eye To Eye offers an attempt to bring together the people and thoughts of the city. The artist posed three questions to each person who agreed to be drawn. They related to their thoughts on the future of the city, their contribution towards it and a very personal question related to their experience and memory. These questions were an attempt for the artist to seek a deeper connection with her sitter, to engage in conversation otherwise difficult with the stranger. Besides the language barrier, in which an interpreter played a useful role since the artist being only English speaking, the artist found the struggle to answer these questions as revealing as the answers themselves. Whether; surface level responses, inability to answer, people answering what they think they should answer rather than what they really believe- the voices in this gallery are reflective of the encounters the artist by chance and offers a glimpse into the unspoken connection.