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K11 MUSEA is pleased to present Hot Concrete: LA to HK, the first major group presentation of Los Angeles-based artists in Hong Kong, running from Friday, 21 October through to Sunday, 13 November 2022. Sponsored and supported by UBS AG, H.Moser & Cie and Ruinart; the exhibition is curated by Sow & Tailor (Los Angeles), presented by K11 MUSEA (Hong Kong) and WOAW Gallery (Hong Kong); and co-organized by Ouyang Art Consulting (Los Angeles). Hot Concrete: LA to HK is the second iteration of Sow & Tailor's inaugural exhibition from 2021 with an expanded selection of thirty artists and over fifty-five artworks. As an epicenter for creativity not only in Asia, but also internationally, Hong Kong enthusiastically welcomes the explosive creativity of Los Angeles and the breadth and rigor of its multidisciplinary and multi generational artists.
Hot Concrete: LA to HK's unique curatorial perspective uses the four major principles of ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement, as its point of departure, particularly a fresh approach, movement, balance, and harmony. The exhibition is not only a bridge that connects two significant artistic hubs and geographies, but also provides Hong Kong's art-viewing public with a glimpse into the current creative energy of Los Angeles and its limitless opportunities for exploration, innovation, and self-fashioning. Hot Concrete not only fosters cultural exchange, but also injects the vibrancy of Los Angeles into Hong Kong's cultural landscape, benefiting the latter's community of artists, curators, collectors, and enthusiasts of art.
Hot Concrete is a multi-generational exhibition, presenting a diverse arrangement of artists positioned at various points in their career who define this important moment in Los Angeles's creative history. It is also multidisciplinary, featuring numerous practices such as sculpture, installation, video, painting, and furniture design to showcase a wide range of talents. Hot Concrete's artists represent Los Angeles's unique position as a place where a multiplicity of cultures coexist and flourish. They reflect on their personal histories and lived experiences as minorities, children of diaspora, first-generation citizens, and immigrants in their practice. References to California's vernacular cultures, including car culture, murals and graffiti found on overpasses, bridges, and the concrete walls of the LA River, or signage on mom-and-pop shops in ethnic pockets, are abound in the exhibition.
All the artists are community-oriented and socially engaged, interrogating class, gender, race, identity, and alternative subcultures, like skating, surfing, lowrider, and graffiti, all of which add to the colorful fabric of the city. They turn inwards while looking to their city's unique history. Like Los Angeles, Hong Kong is a bustling metropolis shaped by a fusion of disparate cultures. The work of Hot Concrete's artists serves as a reminder for Hong Kong audiences to reflect on their personal histories, their relationship to the city, and the communities that shape it. Hot Concrete continues the creative legacy of generations of cultural workers using the sprawling city's vibrant landscape, physical and cultural, and its history, both chaotic and harmonious, as a reference. While often personal, nostalgic, and emblematic of the locale in which it is made, the work of these artists finds parallels globally.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
Alfonso Gonzalez Jr.
Anabel Juàrez
Aryo Toh Djojo
Austyn Weiner
Daniel Gibson
Darren & Candice Romanelli
Diana Yesenia Alvarado
Esteban Ramòn Pérez
Greg Ito
Hilary Pecis
Jaime Muñoz
Jan Gatewood
Kara Joslyn
Lauren Satlowski
Mark McKnight
Mario Ayala
Melvino Garretti
Michael Alvarez
Miranda Byk
Pedro Pedro
Peter Shire
Ryan Preciado
Sayre Gomez
Sonya Sombreuil
Sula Bermùdez-Silverman
Tidawhitney Lek
Veronica Fernandez
Wendy Park
Zoé Blue M.
K11 MUSEA
Launched in 2019, K11 MUSEA is the new cultural-retail destination on Victoria Dockside, Hong Kong. It sits on the site formerly known as Holt's Wharf, an important go-down in Tsim Sha Tsui that dates to 1910. K11 MUSEA is the result of ten years of planning and building by K11 Group founder and entrepreneur Adrian Cheng. Cheng's vision is to reinvigorate Hong Kong's waterfront with one hundred creative powers and make K11 MUSEA the Silicon Valley of culture that will inspire global millennials and facilitate a broader discussion on the interconnectedness of creativity, culture, and innovation. K11 hopes to usher in a new era of cultural retail which speaks to the growing consumer demand for naturally immersive experiences of art, culture, nature, and commerce. Inspired by 'A Muse by the Sea', K11 MUSEA is designed to enrich the new consumer's daily life through the power of creativity, culture, and innovation.
WOAW GALLERY
Established in 2019, WOAW Gallery is a contemporary art gallery, which presents itself as a dynamic, flexible, and multifaceted hub for artists, curators, galleries, and entrepreneurs. With three gallery spaces in Hong Kong and Mainland China, the gallery is focused on presenting artworks by established and emerging international artists with a fresh perspective. Regularly collaborating with leading experts and taste makers from around the globe as well as organizing their own exhibitions, WOAW is adding Greater China into the wider conversation about the cutting-edge contemporary art scene.
SOW & TAILOR
Launched in 2021, Sow & Tailor is a family run gallery in Los Angeles, dedicated to supporting emerging artists through exhibitions and various projects. Its aim is to foster a space where a local and global community of creatives can thrive. The gallery was founded by artist Greg Ito, his wife Karen Galloway, and family friend Stefano di Paola. The project was started days before the birth of Karen and Greg's daughter, Spring, as the idea that this would be a family business, she could grow up around, participate in, and continue to grow. Sow & Tailor emerges from the long legacy of alternative, artist-run spaces, which have been present in Los Angeles since the 1970s, serving as an incubator and providing local creatives with opportunities to create and exhibit cutting-edge work and making up for a lack of institutional support and resources. True to its name, Sow & Tailor aims to "sow" the seeds of a flourishing contemporary art scene, ultimately connecting or "tailoring" its artists to a global community of creatives through its inclusive program of projects and exhibitions while remaining firmly rooted in the local.
OUYANG ART CONSULTING
OAC was founded by Melanie Ouyang Lum in 2016 in Los Angeles aiming to organize exhibitions in Asia, focusing on China where she lived for six years. Recent exhibitions include Anna Park "Anna Park", Pond Society Foundation, Shanghai (2022); Shara Hughes "The Bridge", YUZ Museum, Shanghai (2021); Derek Fordjour "Gestalt", Pond Society Foundation, Shanghai (2021) and Hilary Pecis "Delivered by the Foehn Winds", SPURS Gallery, Beijing (2020). In addition to organizing exhibitions, she is an advisor to institutional collectors in the region whose focus is on emerging contemporary art.
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