Born 1984, Hong Kong

Glass Bead Game《玻璃珠遊戲》

Glass Bead Game (2021) incorporates the fragmented hand of a tomb pottery figure and the pottery wheel of an ox cart dating from theTang (618-907) dynasties. In combining ancient burial objects with contemporary readymade and mineral stones, Chan’s idiosyncratic sculpture embodies a hybrid form that intersects the architectural, biomorphic, and geological. It creates another dialogue between history and the present. The tomb owners commissioned the pottery figures to materialize their idealized vision of the afterlife. Although not meant to be seen by the living,these funerary objects provide glimpses into the everyday life of the past. Chan poses questions on the idea of value and explores the evolving meanings of these objects. Drawing inspiration from her upbringing in an antique family and her experience of pottery figure restoration, Chan collected these fragments, which are no longer considered“useful” and “useable” from different antique dealers in Hong Kong and restorators. Unearthed and broken, the tomb figures lost their original role and purpose.

Chan thus explores the connection between the archaeology of the past and her archaeology of the present. The recurring themes of hands and stage-like compositions in Chan’s sculptures reconfigure and reinvigorate the lost identities of the pottery figures as protagonists in new imaginative narratives that draw from her personal experience and contemporary culture. At the same time, the sculptures convey Chan’s curiosity about the “hands” as a symbol revealing the marks of their original makers and the gestures of“making” in her practice. It is a compression of different senses of time: human time, geological time, and the time embodied in the material itself.

Chan makes enigmatic sculptures that incorporate urban debris, ancient artefacts, natural materials, industrial and mundane products, generating visual paradoxes in which these objects move seamlessly between past, present and future. Reflecting the shifting urban fabric in her immediate surroundings in Hong Kong, Chan's sculptures undergo an elaborate transformation through tactile experimentation with materials and processes. The artist pushes the limits of her objects' physicality and expands the possibilities of the language of abstraction. Her sculptures provoke a particular atmosphere and feeling that conjure ambient poetry of the built environment. Chan's visceral exploration of the unknown encapsulates her interest in urbanism, architecture, material culture, craft, and antiquities. Her interplay of abstract forms, intricate details, and unexpected materials calls for a physical experience and encourages a new way of seeing and perceiving.