Artists

Isaac Chong Wai

Press release

Zilberman | Berlin is delighted to announce the solo exhibition Falling Carefully by Isaac Chong Wai.

Drawing upon his practice of performative art works, Isaac Chong Wai presents in Falling Carefully works in a painterly or sculptural medium, in which he investigates the processes of image generation that arise in movement and choreographic structures. For this exhibition, Chong created a new series of works entitled Rehearsed, Mirrored, in which he has etched bodies in motion on mirrors and glass panels. Moreover, we present a video installation of his performances Falling Exercise and Help! Help? Help. (both from 2016).

At this year’s Venice Biennale, Foreigners Everywhere, Chong’s performance and large-format, 7-channel video installation Falling Reversely is being shown in a space extending over 300 square meters of the Arsenale. In that work, Chong employs a choreography of falling to investigate collective forms of resistance to racially motivated aggression and institutional violence. In the exhibition Falling Carefully at the Zilberman, as well, Chong portrays the falling movements of individuals who are caught by the careful intervention of sympathetic by-standers. In this way, Chong turns the feeling of powerlessness into a feeling of trust in the help of others, by decelerating the falling movement or embedding the falling body in the supporting structure of a collective.

Chong portrays the act of falling as a recurrent process intimately tied to human existence. He mitigates the negative connotations of falling by allowing the falling body to be supported by others in a gentle counter-motion. The empathy of others, who come to help and enable him to stand up again, relieves the falling person of the terrible feeling that something irreversible is happening.