HUNG Keung
Control Freak (ver.01)
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Artist HUNG Keung’s installation Control Freak (ver.01) was commissioned by the Asia Society, as part of the 2018 exhibition LOVE Long: Robert Indiana and Asia. Taking the form of a calligraphy machine with which the audience can interact, constantly between states of control and a loss of control, the installation intersects the physical act of Chinese writing with the emotional acts connected with human love.
Background
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LOVE Long: Robert Indiana and Asia (2018) presents works by the American artist Robert Indiana, renowned for his ‘LOVE’ series of public art, with eight Asian artists and collectives creating pieces in response to the themes of love and language. Considering the Chinese character for ‘love’ (æ„›), HUNG Keung realised that a core part of the character, as well as the concept of love itself, is the ‘heart’ (心). This character, ubiquitous in daily use, is extremely simple to write and repeat, much like saying ‘love’ out loud, yet most of the time very little attention is paid towards the emotional truths behind such an act of writing. The artist wished to create a piece that directs focus on the physicality of writing the ‘heart’, in a way that challenges the viewer’s ideas about calligraphy and sheds light on our shared struggles surrounding love and relationships. As philosopher Eric Fromm so aptly writes in The Art of Loving, "There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love.”
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