Bessmertny is a child of the crossroads, born in the Russian-Chinese border town of Blagoveshchensk and moved to Macau with his wife Gala in 1994. Educated in the Vladivostok Academy of Fine Arts in classical painting he is trained in the skillful mastery of European traditional painting that he chooses or chooses not to use at will. Very well read on many subjects, his works traverse between philosophy, politics, theology, art history and music. However, these subjects are just devices to arrive at something deeper, which is his cutting insight and observations of human behavior as a parody of life.

In his newest series of works entitled “STIR FRY” Bessmertny traverses our connected and disconnected worlds between East and West within the backdrops of European settings. Within a stir fry the elements are still distinguishable. They don’t melt together as in a stew. They remain as distinct items within a contained vessel. Bessmertny likens his life living in Asia with the diversity of peoples and cultures all within the global city of Hong Kong to a Stir Fry. The English, the Scots, the Cantonese, the Mainlanders, the Japanese, the Russians, the Koreans, etc. make for an interesting mix of both global exchanges set within very traditional cultures that can be both nationalistic or clinging to traditional cultural expressions. This may be considered as the forms in which traditional culture is expressed, how it forms part of the identity and heritage of a traditional community, as well as how they are passed down from generation to generation. Within this series Bessmertny touches upon the Scottish Referendum, the Hong Kong protests, the American ideologues all intertwined within a parody of provocative thoughts and ideas. Bessmertny’s paintings have the appeal of a grandiose Baroque masterpiece yet the cutting edge of a modern-day samurai. He touches on many a taboo subject yet the works still hold an air of traditional elegance.

After presenting her first solo exhibition, 'Night is Imminent', in Hong Kong in 2011, Maya Hewitts returns to HK for All Along the Shadows, a solo exhibition at 10 Chancery Lane Gallery.

Exhibition dates: Thursday 30 October - Friday 22 November 2014

10 Chancery Lane is proud to present a momentous new solo exhibition by Hong Kong artist Frog King Kwok (a.k.a. Kwok Mang-ho, b. 1947). An inimitable force unto himself, Frog King is a pioneering conceptual and performance artist who has been breaking boundaries in Hong Kong and beyond since the late 1960s. Originally trained in ink painting and calligraphy in the studio of seminal New Ink Painting master Lui Shou Kwan--where he was already considered to be something of an enfant terrible—Frog King is one of the earliest Chinese contemporary artists to explore the use of ink painting as a conceptual tool, incorporating it as both action and material into multiple-media installations, performances, happenings and assembled environments incorporating discards and everyday objects.
For the TOTEM exhibition at 10 Chancery Lane, Frog King has been invited to transform the exterior and interior spaces of the gallery, working with guest curator Valerie C. Doran to create a layered environment of art (and of realms) that both showcases Frog King’s vibrant installation and performance work and at the same time reveals a deeper stillness at the heart of the artist’s expressive life. Special features will include a new series of carved wood sculptures, totemic columns, ink paintings and screens.

10 Chancery Lane Gallery is proud to presents our third edition of the HKFOREWORD series that launched in 2012 in order to support the development of contemporary art in Hong Kong.

Eric TSANG (Chinese University), Ivan CHAN (Chinese University), Rita LAM (Chinese University), Shirley NG (Baptist University), and Max CHAN (School of Creative Media, City University), Charlotte MAN (Baptist University), Dino RIB (Baptist University).

Using the refined technique of traditional Suzhou embroidery, the works create highly detailed yet fragile images – These currencies have become symbols of certain periods in history representing the power and beliefs of political regimes and economic powers which once prevailed but whose time has now well-passed. This series of works have been ten years in the making and have been meticulously created by Suzhou’s most expert embroiderers on sheaths of transparent black silk lending them strength of imagery on an ephemeral and fleeting backdrop.

Opening hours: by appointment only

A series of Huang Rui’s important early works dating from the era of 1983-1986 will be shown for the first time in Hong Kong. These early abstract works represent a new framing of reality for contemporary China, one that becomes free from the expressions of socialist realism, which controlled art under Maoist China. They are now being re-examined as significant examples of contemporary art deeply rooted in Chinese philosophies and structures setting Huang Rui apart from art of that era

Please come and meet us on booth 1D43 where we will be presenting works by: ATUL DODIYA, DINH . Q. Le, VU DAN TAN, THE PROPELLER GROUP, HUANG RUI, SHAO YINONG & MUCHEN, KONSTANTIN BESSMERTNY and WANG KEPING.

A Splendid Web from Heaven to Earth is an installation of a giant web flowing delicately from ceiling to the floor. The stainless-steel-made web looks shimmering and inviting from afar. However, as one gets closer, what seems so still and peaceful a moment ago suddenly turns unsettling. The conflicting feeling is a metaphor of the chaos in today’s world. It poses a question to our being, a threat to our sense of existence. The Hrdaya, or literally “Eternal Heart”, is a series of wood works by Shao Yinong. As he takes off the layers of bark of the tree trunk following patterns of its annual rings, the artist uncovers the pagoda-like structure hidden in it. He further fills the cracks of the trunks with ash which is commonly seen in temples in Qinghai area. The installation triggers a religious and spiritual reading into it, inviting the viewers to look into eternity through traces of life.

Also in the exhibition are the photographic work, Webbed by Muchen and a series of etching by Shao Yinong entitled, Objects of Nature. Shao Yinong and Muchen have selected these four series of new works to conclude a stage of their on-going research in the past few years. It also marks the beginning of another journey for the artists, one that leads to a deeper search concerning both the external and internal worlds.

Artists Ren Jing and Xiao Zheluo represent a new generation of artists in China whose works are deeply introspective. They relay both sensitivity and sincerity to their environment and those around them. Somehow their works are brief solitary insights that evoke rich emotional states of being within a contemporary world as well as their lives in current day China. Highly personal and intimate are their works and of exceptional technique, we are proud to exhibit their first show in Hong Kong.

Join us at Art Paris,from March 27th to March 30th 2014
Grand Palais, China Section, Booth F11

We are presenting works by:
Huang Rui, Ma Desheng, Pan Jian, Shi Guorui, Wang Keping, Xiao Lu, Xiao Zheluo, Zhao Gang