Mandy Zhang Art is proud to present Green Rock and The Magic Mountain, the second exhibition since we opened our new Marylebone gallery space. The exhibition invites viewers to immerse themselves in a fantastical dreamscape created by Silia Ka Tung and inspired by a Classical Chinese folktale written by the legendary writer Pu Songling. Tung uses her sculptural installations and works on paper to create The Magic Mountain (青丘), home to the Nine-tails Fox in the folktale, where myth, nature, reality and magic intertwine and everything can grow, change, and evolve without any human-imposed boundaries.
Tung is fascinated by the complexity of the wonders of nature, myth and folklore of diverse cultures. Tung’s maternal grandfather was a traditional Chinese painter whose early influence affected her style and process across many disciplines and media. Growing up in Hong Kong, Tung was also exposed to vibrant pop cultures, Japanese animation, Manga, and video games, qualities of which have given her source materials in shapes, colours and playful elements in her paintings and sculptures. Alongside her cultural background, Tung looks to her contemporaries such as Annette Messager, Laure Prouvost, Eva Hesse, and Sheila Hicks, who also work with storytelling, textile and installation.
It is noteworthy that while Tung relies on instinctual impulses in her two-dimensional works such as painting and drawings, she adopts a more research-driven approach to sculpture. She spends extensive time researching, planning, and collaborating with sewing experts to experiment with size, shape, material and structure to create the initial soft physical object, before switching back to the instinctive mode to finish. The meticulous process allows her sculptures to stand independently or be part of larger installations, and are sometimes able to be reassembled into entirely new artworks.
In Green Rock and The Magic Mountain, each artwork acts as a gateway to an alternative dimension where the unfamiliar beckons. This experience may transcend the ordinary, luring viewers to proceed with existential inquiries about the essence of their existence.
