Visual artist Chihoi’s solo exhibition in Hong Kong ‘Merry Christmas and Happy New Year’ features around 40 new oil paintings and a slide projection of the same images. Taking his personal old slide collection as the point of departure, Chihoi paints the wall projection of the slide images directly on canvas. The reproduced images illustrate familiar impressions of old Hong Kong between the 1960s and 1980s. The artist then turns these reproductions on canvas into slides and projects them. As time passes, memories are transferred and translated, eventually encapsulated in their original medium.

For Chihoi who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, the Hong Kong in the old slides belongs to some other past, a time and space he never knew. Through a tourist’s perspective, the artist revisits old images and impressions. With the advance of imaging technology and the Internet, the slides, originally sold as souvenirs and not intended for the local people, now constitute a kind of shared memory of Hong Kong history, a missing puzzle piece to fill in the gaps of the otherwise not too complete memory. The faded old slides are left with a reddish colour, and the artist tries to reproduce this weathered, aged colour of the present: the vivid colours of neon lights have become mellow yet still enchant.

Gallery address: 3/F, 25 Hing Wo Street, Tin Wan, Aberdeen