Curatorial Statement

Light plays frequently on the blinking side of the city. Much like Paris at the beginning of last century, Hong Kong has become the “City of Light”.  We are used to covering our buildings with light, awing ourselves with this reminder of their existence, the glittering of their magnificence, the sparkling of their insignificance. Where there is light there is also shadow; the two are inseparable. This archetypal duality has informed the mythology of human existence from the dawn of time, as it has also the iconography of art across all cultures. "Fleeting Light" allows us to re-examine this conjunction in a contemporary context, both in the ‘light’ of the digital which has its own ‘on-off’ dualism, and the urban context where our over-saturated landscape of illuminations cries out for a critical revision that puts the deeper meaning and enjoyment of ‘light and dark’ back into focus.

Jeffrey Shaw and Maurice Benayoun, Curators