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Sins of Hong Kong

Works by Andrew Lin

Vernissage: 21 April 2010,   6:30pm - 8:30pm
Exhibition Continues: 21 April 2010 - 8 May 2010

Branch Gallery, 27 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong

Of the Seven Deadly Sins, which is your favourite?

Schoeni Art Gallery is delighted to present Andrew Lin’s debut solo exhibition in association with alivenotdead.com. Sins of Hong Kong will feature a series of artworks, including oil paintings, wood carvings and limited edition prints and t-shirts, which Andrew Lin has begun creating since 2008. Apart from demonstrating his ardent passion for art, this exhibition also forms part of an on-going movement to promote the awareness of local Hong Kong artists and art scene.

Born in Taipei 1969, drawing and painting has been Andrew Lin’s passionate interest ever since he has been able to hold a pencil in his hand. He immigrated to Los Angeles with his family at the age of 12 and obtained a BFA degree in Illustration from the California State University of Long Beach. Fascinated by the sci-fi creatures in Star Wars, Andrew also picked up another hobby during his college years, taking courses in SFX make-up. Upon graduation, he became a freelance FX make-up artist in Hollywood and has participated in major films including Alien 3 and Mimic. In 1996, he returned to Hong Kong/Taiwan, hoping to promote SFX make-up within the Asian film industry, as a result he was spotted by director Chu Yen Ping and became an actor at the same time.

Sins of Hong Kong sums up Lin’s observations and feelings from living in Hong Kong over the past 10 years. The dark mood and ‘zombie-like’ characters portrayed in his artwork reveal the negative energy accumulated within him through his encounters with people who are immersed in sins and ‘truly the representatives of the walking dead’. Bringing reference to the Seven Deadly Sins from the bible and employing well known historical figures such as Adolf Hitler, Lin’s dark grotesque caricatures draw parody and mockery of some of the ugliest truth and darkest sides of human nature. Other works entitled Claustrophobia and Life also reveal intense emotions and struggles of the human psyche as a result of living in a compact city like Hong Kong. To express his subject’s evilness and corruptness, Lin often employs symbolic metaphor represented through the distortion of the face and figures, as well as the signs of transformation into evil shown through their elongated canine teeth and ears. Lin’s cinematic background shows strong influence in his oeuvre, in terms of its idiom and representation, playing out evil and darkness through dialogue of the senses and visual appeal into the depths of our hearts.

"In a way, painting helps me to release the negative energy that I have accumulated through watching how these people live, eat, work or becoming successful. The act of painting is metaphoric of throwing all such negative energy into a trash can. It purifies me.” – Andrew Lin

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