Gallery EXIT presents ‘Aurora’, Stanley Shum’s solo exhibition featuring 8 oil paintings created this year. The exhibition runs from 6 January to 3 February, 2024.  The new works in this exhibition reflect the sincere hopes of the artist and the community where he belongs for the future amidst the current turbulent world situation, touching on major issues of the era, such as emotional relationship, rebuilding of civilisations and migration, contemplating on how to live a resilient life, in love and solidarity, projecting a message of light and hope in the darkness.
 
‘Aurora’ refers to the Roman goddess of dawn, the first light as night turns into day, announcing the arrival of dawn to the world, after which Galileo named the phantasmagoric northern lights. The past two years had a special significance for Shum: The end of the pandemic and the birth of his daughter symbolised a new life, in both senses of the word, and inspired these works about ‘hope’ and ‘imagination of the future’. In Shum’s recently developed methodology of visual presentation, figurative landscapes overlap with abstract lines and colour blocks, sharp lines dissect light into its original spectral components as through a prism, where large amounts of red, blue and yellow are employed. Like neon lights, the dazzling colours contrast starkly with the dark black, setting off the struggle between light and darkness. A singed seed leads the audience into a splendid and vast world of fantasy, sprouting from burnt ashes and growing into something more than an illusory flower.

Opening: Saturday 2-5pm

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