Hoo Fan Chon is a Malaysian visual art practitioner based in George Town, Penang. By reframing everyday life with irony and wry humour, his works observe the oscillations and toggles between social classes, the official and the informal, the highbrow and the lowbrow.
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︎ email ︎ cv
✺ 2024 ✺ 2023 ✺ 2022 ✺ 2021 ✺ 2020 ✺ 2019 ✺ 2018 ✺ older works ✺ photography ✺ video ✺ painting ✺ sculpture ✺ installation ✺ writing ✺ george town ✺ archive ✺ fish ✺ durian ✺ badminton ✺
Into the World of Palpable Objects
and Fruitful Delights
Into the World of Palpable Objects and Fruitful Delight
2011 Feb, Eleven Spitalfields Gallery (London, UK)
Curated by Keith Whittle
The Blue & White Collection
Set of 9 digital C‐type prints, 20’’ x 24’’, edition 5 + 1 AP, 2010-2012
Founder's hoard # 1 Antique glass cabinet with air-dried agar-agar casts, 42 x 44 x 81 cm, 2010
Plaster Mould
Plaster of Paris, 51 x 51 x 34 cm, 2010
Jelly Sculpture Master Copy #3 & #4
Expanded foam sculptures, approx. 46cm x 49cm x 32 cm each, 2010
Collector's Portfolio Table Prints Set
A selection of cyanotype prints on archival acid-free paper, dimensions variable, 2010
2011 Feb, Eleven Spitalfields Gallery (London, UK)
Curated by Keith Whittle
︎
List of works:The Blue & White Collection
Set of 9 digital C‐type prints, 20’’ x 24’’, edition 5 + 1 AP, 2010-2012
Founder's hoard # 1 Antique glass cabinet with air-dried agar-agar casts, 42 x 44 x 81 cm, 2010
Plaster Mould
Plaster of Paris, 51 x 51 x 34 cm, 2010
Jelly Sculpture Master Copy #3 & #4
Expanded foam sculptures, approx. 46cm x 49cm x 32 cm each, 2010
Collector's Portfolio Table Prints Set
A selection of cyanotype prints on archival acid-free paper, dimensions variable, 2010
“By assuming the role of a modern day amateur antiquarian and anthropologist, one informed by earlier figures of 18th and 19th century travellers and amateur naturalists, Hoo explores the role that cultural artefacts have as residues and deposits of the process of cultural translation.
Amongst these cultural artefacts, the Willow Pattern chinaware and the Victorian copper jelly mould underline for Hoo the notion of cultural translation. In works such as the 'Blue and White Collection'; a series of paper earthenware works created in response to the Willow Pattern invented by English craftsmen in the late eighteenth century and embellished with imaginary landscapes made up of oriental architectural structures, exoticised follies from ornamental gardens found within the UK, Hoo playfully explores how a foreign culture can be appropriated and translated then subconsciously tucked into the local culture. On the other hand, the jelly moulds collection explores the seeming de rigueur of the decorative Victorian dessert to individual nostalgia and moral sentiment. Crafted from brightly coloured and luminous gelling agents imported from Indonesia and produced from moulds informed by Rococo & Neoclassical architectural details, these eloquent and beguiling works attempt to call attention to the incongruous relation of expropriation and appropriation.”
(Excerpt from exhibition’s press release)
Amongst these cultural artefacts, the Willow Pattern chinaware and the Victorian copper jelly mould underline for Hoo the notion of cultural translation. In works such as the 'Blue and White Collection'; a series of paper earthenware works created in response to the Willow Pattern invented by English craftsmen in the late eighteenth century and embellished with imaginary landscapes made up of oriental architectural structures, exoticised follies from ornamental gardens found within the UK, Hoo playfully explores how a foreign culture can be appropriated and translated then subconsciously tucked into the local culture. On the other hand, the jelly moulds collection explores the seeming de rigueur of the decorative Victorian dessert to individual nostalgia and moral sentiment. Crafted from brightly coloured and luminous gelling agents imported from Indonesia and produced from moulds informed by Rococo & Neoclassical architectural details, these eloquent and beguiling works attempt to call attention to the incongruous relation of expropriation and appropriation.”
(Excerpt from exhibition’s press release)