CRAPITAL, Hugh Leung Solo Exhibition
To mark the end of his academic life as a bachelor’s student, LEUNG SIU FUNG HUGH presents his personal show — CRAPITAL in the early summer of 2021. In the course of the one-week exhibition, CRAPITAL seeks to transform Leung’s studio space into an anomalous exhibition space that allows one to explore the conventions in a multifaceted capitalist society through his 5 featured works.
In Cigarette Cabinet, Leung juxtaposes his whimsical package designs with ‘warning’ labels that condone the act of smoking. With the faintly illuminated ‘Tobacco’ sign shining above the four rows of cigarettes inside the cabinet, it highlights the dangerous yet alluring quality of addictive substances that might somehow once become the ‘light’ amidst the dark times of one’s life. The warning labels on the cigarette boxes also ridicule how governments often promote smoking as a dangerous act yet still earn billions of dollars from tobacco tax, hence it gives cigarettes the duality of the ‘dangerousness’ of cigarettes— “dangerous” to one’s health and “dangerously” lucrative to the government.
Having lived in both Asian and European metropolises, Leung is deeply interested in placing every subject of urban life under scrutiny. You Have Made It is a sculpture that ridicules the societal conventions in Asian society. For many Asians, especially in East Asia, owning a spacious home in a metropolis and having graduated from a prestigious university are the only indicators to determine whether they are successful or not. Such ineluctable pressure is given by the society surely deserves some kind of reward for those who worked round the clock for it — the golden sculpture hence becomes a token to congratulate those who have achieved “success” in accordance with the societal conventions.
His other works also traject into a wide range of issues experienced by the mass in a bustling, indifferent capitalist society where consumerism and fast-growing technology prevails. While Choices and Water Dispenser both ridicules consumerism and consumers’ choice under the influence of marketing and advertising strategies, Bear as an ‘ancient’ object recalls one of their childhood innocence amidst the crappy reality in the capitalist society.