One year after her first solo art exhibition, half a year after studying arts in New York, local artist Crystal Chan held her third solo exhibition “I Am My Own Landscape” in Albergue SCM on Wednesday the 5th of August, showcasing her latest artworks created after her move to The Big Apple, including over 50 watercolours and over 20 photos.
The name of the exhibition is a sentence from a Fernando Pessoa poem, “I myself”. After the first solo exhibition “Living In the Memories of the Future Self” concluded her past, the second solo exhibition “Forever Someone Else” was dedicated to the people she’s close to, and now the young local artist has finally moved to the curiosity that interests almost all artists – herself.
The exhibited artworks are all about Chan herself. In her previous works, figures under Chan’s drawing pen were usually re-composed facial features, expressing complex feelings. But among her new works she has dimmed the faces, the outlines, focusing more on the body, using the nature of water to shade and to deduce the feeling of nothingness. In most of her new sketches, she is nude, with different gestures. She’s been very open with herself.
“I know myself quite well. Most of my works are related to body, desire, sex, loneliness, or observing myself,” says Chan. One year before leaving to New York she started to draw her own body. “I’ve been shooting myself nude, observing and drawing. But before moving to New York, I just wanted to focus on drawing my boyfriend or people who are close to me, or who have influenced me. But in New York I had lots of time to be with myself, then I started to realize that, in my past relations with others, I may just have projected my emotions on them, and who I was seeing or who I was with, now I may finally turn out to be myself.”
New York not only helps Chan learn more about herself, but also provides her with more styles and skills to experiment and learn from. Apart from the watercolours that she’s already good at, she has also been practicing monochromes, plaster, shading, wood board art, landscape painting, cardboard laser cut, etc.
“I’m tired of my previous style, there was too much illustration, so I changed a bit this time. I’m not sure whether I will go on with what I used to do, or if I’ll bend in a new style. I didn’t think too much about the works while I was creating them, instead I’ve been thinking more about life, which I may later reveal on paper.”
As a new New Yorker, the first half-year was not easy for Chan. Apart from trying to integrate into the society, she had to deal with the double pressures from both relationship and economic realities. But that period has almost passed. Chan has started to explore and enjoy the city more and more. There are lots of museums nearby her school and around the city; recommendations of great artists from her teachers with topics Chan is interested in; not to mention greater chances of meeting different interesting artists there. “This is what I’m lacking in Macau,” says Chan, “the more artists I know, the more inspire me to create art. I feel I’m closer to art than before.”
Regarding to the future, Chan says she doesn’t plan far ahead and will take it as it comes. “I’ve always wanted to be a ‘little great’ person, like Egon Schiele. I wish I could be like him, not that famous, but there is always a group of people who are emotionally connected to my works, and remember my work. That would be my greatest achievement.”
Chan on her latest exhibition:
From “Living in the memories of the future self”, to “Forever someone else”, and now “I am my own landscape”, perhaps all I've ever wanted is to write a single long poem, carrying all my murmur. I believed I hadn’t made any progress, but then I looked back and realized there was a tiny change in me. We often only see events in our lives as destined to unfold the way they did long after they take place. I always know, with all the steps I’ve taken, that the scenery is no longer the same.
