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In Macau, the most reliable mode of transport might just be your own two feet. When you see a queue that three or four buses couldn't possibly hold, and waiting for a bus takes forty minutes, a thirty or forty-minute walk really doesn't seem like much. However, if you need to cross a bridge, or are carrying luggage, and there are no taxis, you have no choice but to endure the crush…
What if you had to face this reality every day, constantly swallowing your frustration? What if, through a twist of time and space, you were transported back five hundred years to when the Portuguese first landed, encountering the same situation? What would happen? Their luggage wasn't just one or two suitcases; they had giraffes, peacocks… plundered along the way. A noble's entourage could number several people, forcing their massive luggage onto bus roofs and flagging down taxis by force. The scenes in Ah Shing's mind are humorously conveyed through his meticulous and skilled brushstrokes.
Getting to know Ah Shing began with his map works. Delicate pen lines, relaxed hatching, the outer contours of Macau from different eras. Dense forests, disproportionate figures and buildings threatening to distort the map itself. Everything in Ah Shing's work is always slightly askew, as if in constant motion—even the water patterns are never still. Starting from his solo exhibition in Portugal last year, a shift seemed perceptible. Descending from the bird's-eye view of maps to ground level, yet without losing the dynamism of the scene. Each of Ah Shing's new works in this exhibition is like a scene from a film, narrating a story as it unfolds.
Ancient China had Gu Kaizhi's handscroll painting The Nymph of the Luo River, where viewers could slowly read the story the artist told by unrolling the scroll and moving their gaze horizontally. The main work in this exhibition employs a similar technique to narrate an imagined scenario from the artist's mind. What if, back when the Portuguese first set foot in Macau, they encountered a long bus queue? Please start from one end of the work and slowly watch this story unfold.
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