Li Si Rong and Jay Juhye Kang
Unfinished Intersection
24 July – 17 August 2024
Unfinished Intersection is a duo solo exhibition presented by Jay Juhye Kang and Li Si Rong exploring the intersections and unfinished aspects of various situations in everyday life through their respective perspectives.
The exhibition displays the delicate surreal style of Si Rong and Juhye’s rugged realism, creating a strong sense of contrast within the same space. This juxtaposition is intended to echo the unpredictable and temporary nature of these processes, which are characterised by the rapid interplay of roughness, fragility, and chaos. It also evokes delicate emotions and sensations from our subconscious.
In the exhibition, Jay explores the aesthetic of ‘imperfection and unfinishedness’ through her installations and paintings. The installation questions the very essence of whether ‘completion’ is defined by achieving a “flawless and perfect” state or by fully realising the artist’s intention. Jay aims to intertwine these concepts in a relatable and everyday manner. She seeks to convey the tension and intimacy between individuals, as well as the obscurity and clarity found in everyday lives through the object-making process.
Imperfection is closely tied to the human condition, as people make mistakes, are full of flaws, and are vulnerable.
Messy and overlapped lines, unidentifiable figures, and blank spaces convey the ephemeral, fragile, and vulnerable moments of everyday life. These flaws are stitched and stacked with various materials through a repetitive and continual act to ‘undo’ mistakes, which, although creating more crevices, also form new narratives and perspectives. This process, while inherently fragile and ephemeral, authentically represents our existence and what sustains us in this life.
The narratives that imperfect crevices and flaws bring, the existence of undefined potential for further stories, and varied paths open to interpretation rather than seeking a clear answer, convey her perception of imperfection.
Si Rong draws from the fundamental theory of fractal proposed by the French-American mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot to organise and interpret various chaotic intersections in daily life. Fractals typically exhibit dimensions that are called “Fractal Dimension”, which aren’t whole numbers, determined by the ruggedness, irregularity, and fracturing of objects. Fractals are everywhere: from the human body—where major arteries branch into smaller ones and small arteries branch into capillaries—to natural phenomena such as coastlines, tree trunks and branches, snowflakes, and lightning.
We are fractals, we exist within fractals.
Si Rong endeavours to incorporate these concepts of fractals simplified into integer dimensions of one, two, and three into their exhibition, using an sim-pler perspective to organise everyday life. She begins by organising daily chaos from a linear, one-dimensional perspective. Threading torn calendar pages back together with fine lines in reverse as a retrospective of daily life. The two-dimensional exploration revolves around triangles in planar paintings. It features fractal imagery with mountainous triangles and organic shapes, abstractly simplifying and rearranging similar scenes through repetition. In the three-dimensional space, leveraging the self-similarity and self-imitating characteristics of fractals, everyday objects are simplified and recreated, presenting a state of complexity characterised by variability.
Images by Ardit Hoxha