Roselina Hung – pretty boys kill me – Gallery FUKAI

My exhibition, pretty boys kill me, is up for its final week. Thanks to everyone who has come down the past few weekends. If you haven’t had a chance to see the show yet, it is open this Saturday from 1 – 4 PM. For those who are out of town or unable to make it to the show, I’ve taken some photographs of the exhibition and its installation at Gallery FUKAI.

Roselina Hung – pretty boys kill me – Gallery FUKAI

Roselina Hung – pretty boys kill me – Gallery FUKAI

Roselina Hung – pretty boys kill me – Gallery FUKAI

Roselina Hung – pretty boys kill me – Gallery FUKAI

Roselina Hung – pretty boys kill me, wallpaper installation, 2013

Thank you to everyone who came out to the opening of my exhibition, pretty boys kill me. There was a great turn out, and I received an overwhelmingly positive response from people. The exhibition runs until April 27th, and Gallery FUKAI is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 1 – 4 pm. If you are interested in seeing the show and cannot make it to those times, please feel free to get in touch with me and I will be happy to try to accommodate viewings by appointment.

Roselina Hung – Phantasmagoria 3, coloured pencil on paper, 11″ x 14″, 2013

I will be uploading images of the installation of the exhibition soon to my blog and website, but in the meantime, I’ve added images of the drawing to my website. The artwork in this show was a step in a new direction for me, and I’m really excited about where it will lead. My drawings were very well received, and I was happy with the response that people had to my wallpaper. I’m hoping to make it available for purchase on my website by special order soon.

Roselina Hung, Phantasmagoria 1 (detail), coloured pencil on paper, 11″ x 14″, 2013

My solo exhibition, pretty boys kill me, opens tonight at Gallery FUKAI, and I’m very excited about showing my new work. If you are in Vancouver, please drop by and say hello tonight or during the run of the exhibition, which is up until April 27th. Some of the work is already previewed on my website, but I also have some smaller drawings (a sneak peek seen above) and a wallpaper installation that I haven’t yet put online so you’ll have to come down in person to see them in the gallery.

If you are interested in the ideas behind this body of work, you can read my exhibition statement below. I’ll post more pictures of the exhibition in the upcoming week or two.

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Roselina Hung, hard, coloured pencil on paper, 26″ x 36″, (2012)

pretty boys kill me is a solo exhibition of drawings by Roselina Hung. Her work continues to reference both public and personal histories through new drawings that address the subtle distinction between desire and obsession, with soft-featured young men serving as muse.

Poster-sized drawings of many pretty boy faces, arranged in pattern, present an aesthetic ideal of beauty. Each face was meticulously drawn one at a time, only then were sections erased to reveal snippets from text messages sent and received during Hung’s romantic relationships. While formulaic repetition provides the drawings a mechanical tone, their subject, their dimensions, and the use of coloured-pencil are reminiscent of the lovesick teenager. A series of smaller portraits blend multiple faces to create monstrous amalgams – desire’s derangement of the senses. One gallery wall is covered with wallpaper Hung created that was inspired by Charles Dana Gibson’s ‘Design for Wallpaper – Suitable for a Bachelor Apartment’ (1902). Gibson’s satirical interpretation of romantic longing and female beauty is here replaced by an earnest look at male beauty as the object of affection.

Process and object are both important in this exhibition. At the outset, Hung was interested in whether her drawing capability and the quality of the work would suffer because of the intense repetition. The show’s ambiguous title, pretty boys kill me, gestures at the project’s and Hung’s masochism. Having drawn about 300 faces, Hung injured her right hand and was unable to draw for several months. To be sure, pretty boys kill me speaks to the deleterious effect of obsessive desire. Love becomes an inoperable illness that cannot be removed without destroying the patient. The drawings touch equally, however, on the enabling aspect of obsession, its ability to focus the senses and intellect in pursuit of its object.

I’ve now got a little under two weeks before my show, pretty boys kill me, opens at Gallery FUKAI. Finally preparations are well under way, but in typical fashion, I’ll be drawing and framing to the last minute. I’m really excited for this exhibition, as it’s a whole new body of work never seen before, as I’ve been holed away in the studio working on it for the better part of a year. It’s actually the first solo exhibition I’ve had in Vancouver since 2009, so I’m doubly excited to be showing in Vancouver again.

With lots of work still to be done, I’ve managed to add a little preview page on my website for those that want a little taster before they see the real thing. The exhibition opens on Friday, April 5th, from 8 PM onwards. For those that cannot make it to the opening, the show will be open from April 6th – 27th, on Saturdays and Sundays, from 1 – 4 PM. Please come say hello as I will be gallery sitting many of those hours. And for those that are not in Vancouver, I’ll be updating my website with images of the new work soon, once the exhibition has opened.

In the meantime, please visit my pretty boys kill me webpage for a preview of the show.

Love is Touching Souls

I just received some exciting news!  In late 2011, I applied for a public art project in Banff and then kind of forgot about it as I hadn’t received any news from them after sending my application off. So you can imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail last week that my piece, Love Is Touching Souls, was selected and will be shown on the exterior wall of the Banff Town Hall, for 18 months for some time in 2014-2015. I’m very excited as I had such a great time at the Banff Centre in early 2011 on the What’s Love Got To Do With It residency, that it’s nice to be able to give something back to the town of Banff.

Exterior of Banff Town Hall where my work will be shown

A reproduction of my piece will be shown on the exterior of the building at approximately 8 x 10 feet. This will be my first public art piece and I’m very excited to be a part of this and hope to be able to go for the unveiling next year.  It’s not until at least next year, but I wanted to share the news and I’ll post more updates as I receive them.

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pretty boys kill me, limited edition of 50

In other news, my pretty boys kill me artist books are now available for sale at Project Space in Vancouver.  They also have kept my The Way We Were postcard sets for sale, from their Art Market in December, so both of these are now available in their gallery/shop.

That being said, I did find some time over the holidays to complete a commission I’d like to share with you. It was a commission from my Indiegogo campaign last year, which helped me raise funds to work on my pretty boys kill me drawings in Reykjavik, Iceland in September 2012. The commission was for a head and shoulder pencil crayon drawing, but the thing is, it was of a baby…!

Olivia – coloured pencil on paper, 8×10 in, 2013

I don’t know if this is common knowledge, but it’s actually pretty hard to draw a baby because their facial proportions are so different to that of an adult’s.  Their face is constantly changing as the baby grows and quite quickly for that matter. So it was a challenge, but I’ve always found that I enjoy doing commissions for this reason. Oftentimes, with commissioned portraits, I have to step out of my comfort zone and what I’m used to and work on something I normally wouldn’t do or haven’t done before. So it’s a new experience for me, and I’m happy to say that I really like the end result of my drawing but more importantly, the parents thought I captured the baby girl’s smile perfectly.

For anyone interested in commissioning a portrait, please get in touch with me through my e-mail: rosy(at)roselinahung.com

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Finishing up my third pretty boy drawing

April isn’t far now (how is it mid-January already?!), and with the exhibition opening the first week of the month, I still have a lot to do. I don’t want to give away too much of what I’m working on, as ideally I’d like to reveal most of the new work at the exhibition and online once the show opens, so major updates of new work will be a bit sparse. My pretty boys kill me project is coming along well, but it is extremely time consuming and I will be dedicating the next couple of months to finishing the art for my exhibition, which will be the first solo exhibition I’ve had since 2009 as well as my first major exhibition of work in Vancouver in many years. I’m looking forward to showing you what I’ve been up to, but you’ll have to wait for the full reveal in April!

The foundation layers of each portrait

pretty boys do christmas – 2012

Thank you again to everyone for their continued support.  I wish you the very happiest of holidays.

I will be taking part in Art Market at Project Space in Vancouver.  My “The Way We Were” postcard set, which is made up of 10 postcards (5 paintings x 2) plus envelopes, will be on sale as part of the fundraiser event.  Buy goods made by artists at Art Market: A Project Space Fundraiser, and proceeds will go to support Project Space’s operating costs.

Project Space is a volunteer-run bookshop, publisher and project space by the non-profit OCW Arts & Publishing Foundation. Art Market is a project by Michael Lee, with support from Vicki Lee, Julia Hong and Project Space.

Art Market (Illustration by Michael Lee)

Project Space
222 E Georgia St
Vancouver, BC

Art Market: A Project Space Fundraiser
Pop-up shop runs: November 23 to December 16, 2012
Grand Opening: November 23 at 8pm

For more information, please visit the Project Space website.

In the beginning…

The other day, while putting together my presentation for the Surrey Art Gallery, I came across some old photos that I had taken of a couple of my self-portrait paintings in progress. I thought it would be interesting to share some of the photos as I actually forgot that this was how I had created the image. My painting, The Return Home, was started in late 2006 and finished in 2007. I had begun the painting in London and brought it back with me to Vancouver. The trip to Vancouver had not actually been a planned permanent return, but it ended up being one, so I finished the painting in Vancouver.

Roselina #1

I had been given a piece of oak to try painting on, and taking the size of the panel into consideration, I decided I wanted to create a double self-portrait. I was working with some photographs I had taken, and I had been torn about whether or not I wanted to stay in London, so I had the idea of the double self and the two sides of me – being in two hearts about coming/going. It wasn’t until a few months later that I realized I was permanently home and would not be returning to London to live, and that was when the background for this image emerged.

Roselina #2

It was the year of the giant snow storm in Vancouver and a lot of the trees had fallen down from the early and unexpected snowfall. I felt like the fallen trees reflected how I was feeling at the time, rather dejected about my move back as I wasn’t ready yet to come home. The detailed Florentine pattern in the background was the first elaborate pattern I had painted and I remembered it being a painstaking process but well worth the effort. This was quite a big step forward in my practice, a major stepping stone to the detailed floral patterns now found in many of my pieces.

The knit of the sweater taking shape

The Return Home (2007)

Another image I dug up on my computer was this photo of the set up from my London studio when I was painting She Wanted To Do More Than Just Pass.

My London studio set up for small-scale paintings

It’s just a little sneak peek into how I was working at the time. This painting was the first part of my “return home”, painted months before I had to leave London, when I still didn’t know where I wanted to go next. It’s interesting to think of these two paintings as bookends to my decision.

She wanted to do more than just pass (2006)

These were some of the paintings that I talked about at the panel discussion at the Surrey Art Gallery this past weekend with Eryne Donahue and David Horvitz. I’d like to thank everyone who came out to the event, as well as Jordan Strom, the Surrey Art Gallery and the Contemporary Art Society Vancouver, for organizing the artist talks and reception. The exhibition, Scenes of Selves, Occasions for Ruses, is on until December 16th.