What Would Nietzche be thinking? Notes on Charles Chau's Upcoming Exhibition in Tokyo

What Would Nietzche be thinking?

Popular culture surrounds us, lifts us up and throws us down sated and exhausted. In plugging into the ether, maxing out on the here and now, what distinguishes the independent mind is its heat-seeking ability to think differently. Of recent months, our diet of the virtual has led to exhaustion of a different category – uncategorisable by any dissection of our life-experience thus far – a deep, deep desire for touch, taste and tumult.

Hugs, above all, hugs. Those different thinkers made it through if not unscathed, then strengthened. The adversity of Covid times gave us resilience; it gave us strength. We spat out the fake and embraced the shimmering light of a new day dawning or the beauty of blossoms, filling our gaze as we look upwards through branches to the sky above us.

We thought differently, and so we acted and behaved differently.

For me, the thinking was rooted in “What would Nietzsche be thinking?” How would he steer us through the maze of being and becoming? “Quick in, quick out”, he would say, as if he were with us, shoulder to shoulder. We know we have to tame the thoughts that buzz in our heads from waking to sleeping. The answer snaps us out of our reverie. We dare to live in the Nietzschean network of interlocking ideas.

We see the whole. We see the beauty.

NOTES ON CHARLES CHAU’S UPCOMING EXHIBITION IN TOKYO

By Lianne Hackett Photo courtesy of Charles Chau

work illistrations courtesy of artist Work

INTRODUCTION

This is the beauty artists share with us.

Charles Chau’s Fafa (Fafa 1, Hong Kong, 2020; and now Fafa 2, Tokyo, 2021) is such a sharing of beauty. On large-scale canvasses, painted as single images or sectionals, Charles expresses the blossoming of nature in all its joyous hues and tones, before addressing the storm that awaits.

Over 100 years ago, Van Gogh painted cherry blossoms as he imagined them. It is said that Van Gogh although never in Japan, envisioned himself there. Van Gogh, asks us to look upwards, as if we are lying on our backs on the warm ground, gazing up at branches that fork across a sky of unadulterated blue – blossoms Hokusai and Hiroshige reimagined.

Over 100 years after Van Gogh, the Tokyobased art collective teamLab reimagined his works as an immersive 3D installation – the experience “like stepping inside a neon Van Gogh painting” i. Borderless Tokyo attracts more visitors than the Van Gogh Amsterdam – the reimagined a bigger draw than the originals – unthinkable pre virtual. In Fafa 2, Charles also asks us to look upwards. His blossoms are as seen from the ground - the sky an inflorescence of petals. Soon, Fafa blossoms will bloom in Japan – Vincent meets his spirit brother. “What would Nietzsche be doing if he were in Tokyo?” This is a question I would much have enjoyed asking the philosopher. I imagine the answer: “Sushi and sashimi and salted plums; tofu and teriyaki and towering skyscrapers.” I imagine that Nietzsche would, in short aphorism form, make haiku.

The simplicity of haiku speaks of innocence, of purity, of zen.

The art of haiku brings us by way of Nietzsche’s slow arrow of beauty to appreciate the rake mark in the gravel, the bud opening on the tree, the stillness of a moonlit night. Haiku speaks of an age of innocence when the artist stood respected, the poet lauded, the people harmonious. It speaks of an age unlike this one – an age that we want to re-find and restore, but we have lost the way-map. The quest that Henri Alain-Fournier's evoked so beautifully in “Le Grand Meaulnes” – his poignant study of love and loss; the lost estate of the title: the literary dream place, Les Sablonnières.

Right (and preivous page underlay: details of the same):

Reflection (2) 2020 acrylic and mixed media on canvas 38 x 52 in (1.5 in deep) 96.5 x 132.1 cm (3.8 cm deep)

HOW WE STARTED

A DREAM PLACE. HONG KONG IN THE LATE 1980S

In Hong Kong in the late 1980s, I came to know Charles through working with him on a series of essays. At that time, Charles was Chief Editor of Citymagazine, a large-format, big-thinking publication that encapsulated brilliantly the zeitgeist of the day. I was based at LeCadre Gallery, where gallerist Polam Lau, together with Bing Kwan & the late Leo Chan, curated legendary exhibitions and showed the best design. Together with Hong Kong Arts Centre, Citymagazine & LeCadre were fulcrums of the city’s cultural life. In a publication released last year, Oscar Ho Hing-Kay, artist + HKAC Exhibitions Director at the time, speaks of Hong Kong being “built on its ability to accommodate, absorb, adopt, manipulate, and transform” 1 . And so it was.

The Citymagazine essays became much more. Charles’s vision was to champion collectively a thought campaign: Re-think + Re-learn. Together with Matthew Turner, senior lecturer at the Hong Kong Polytechnic’s School of Design, we explored ideas, visions and suggested ways forward. Those have been described as days of innocence, we hope not lost forever. Hope springs from the pages of the limitededition book It Is All About Love that Polam Lau produced in 2020 to celebrate love: that passionate desire, longing and feelings for. The book is a heavyweight: punching in at 7.5 kilos. Lovingly produced in an edition of 150, it is Polam’s tribute to the LeCadre artist family. As acclaimed designer John Morford says of LeCadre, it is “delightfully stubborn, determined and enduring” 2. We all need some of that attitude now and in the days to come. These days – some would call them the antithesis of innocence – but we continue to hold out hope – it might be helpful to explore thoughts of Dislearn + Dis-think. Dis-doing may need to take precedence over Re-doing.

So, what would Nietzsche do to counter our sense of innocence lost? He would set arrows zinging outwards – maxims to give us strength: “Formula of my happiness : a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal…” 3

PHASE ONE FOR THE ARTIST

The first in Charles’s series of exhibitions was Mountain Vastness (Black Series, Hong Kong; White Series, Beijing, 2014), a set of disectional charcoal drawings and installations that was first shown in the intimate space that is the Hong Kong Fringe Gallery, followed by the vast Opposite House Gallery in the Sanlitun district of Beijing, created by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. The contrast of one space to the other was intentional. The now-legendary Hong Kong Fringe inhabits an historic ice house in Central Hong Kong. Contrast the historic with the modernity of Kengo Kuma’s architecture at Opposite House. Dig deeper and an historic connection is made: Kuma was inspired by traditional Beijing Siheyuan residences where a central courtyard is surrounded by buildings on all four sides. In the Opposite House, Charles had the volume he and his partner Rainbow needed for the creation of a monumental, largely sculptural installation – 4.5m wide x 9m long x 3.5m high. Together, they brought the vastness of the mountain into the gallery space.

Alongside vertiginous peaks sculpted in abstract homage to mountains we can only dream of scaling, were the first of Charles’s beautiful charcoal drawings, again of mountains. The full-flowing technique is rooted in Chinese ink and brush but drawn large in charcoal on paper. The contrast of black drawn on white; white carved out against the black darkness of the gallery was a sublime rendering of nature at its most daunting, austere and humbling. he had sculpted. It came as a shock and yet a delightful surprise to me to witness Charles grow into his passion for art. This transformation would have been no surprise to the noted academic Charles Handy, one of Charles’s Professors at the London Business School, and author of The Age of Unreason. After Citymagazine, Charles moved to London to study for an MBA at LBS. He recollects Handy saying, “Change, after all, is only another word for growth, another synonym for learning. We can all do it, and enjoy it, if we want to.” 4 Charles did it; he made the change.

It was if the age of unreason had suddenly become reasonable. Steeped in the Nietzsche world, where sarcasm can flow at times, Charles decided to live instead by Nietzsche’s maxim, “If we possess our why of life we can put up with almost any how”.3

Mountain Vastness marked a pivot in Charles ‘s life: he had found his why; his goal.

In Mountain Vastness, with its bi-tonal palette of Black and White, Charles realised the ambitious project he had set out to create: fast-rewind history and explore a geological past before human existence, back in time to the beginnings of the earth itself.

This essay came into being when I heard that Charles had imprinted Nietzsche’s slow arrow of beauty on the gallery floor in Sanlitun.

Mountain Vastness was the culmination of the moment in the new millennium when Charles transitioned from the hybrid world of cultural creativity/business management to his new world as a pure artist. The change was as vast as the vastness of the mountains Above: Installation view of Moutain Vastness - Black Series, Fringe Gallery, Hong Kong. 2013. Photo: Terry Chan

INTRODUCING PHASE TWO

Charles spent the next six years working in his studio. He left behind the vastness of the mountains, descaling from the heights – a de-scaling in aesthetic & geomorphological terms – to the rich phenomena of field, valley and meadow. He found his firstperson viewpoint – a phenomenology of nowness – the present: happiness on the plains. He found the lushness of blossom where colour abounds.

The result was Fafa, a deliberate breakaway from the previous monotone of Black on White. In Fafa, Charles employs an explosive colour palette that radiates his desire to contemplate and celebrate the now – the nowness of being. In Fafa, Charles found his Nietzschean 'sunspot'.

Colour exploded onto Charles’s palette. The colours of the multihued blossom positively hum as if singing to the playful light of sunshine that dances across the canvasses, brushstrokes fizzing with energy and life. It is as if he wants to bring cheer to people by celebrating the nature that is all around us – in gardens, parks, meadows and balconies – the anywhere and everywhere of where flowers blossom. The artist wants to take us – all of us – outside for a walk in his Wonderland.

Charles describes his working practice – in a measure of his humility, he speaks of painting as making marks - as representing days, weeks, and – on occasion – months and even years of dialogue between him and the world around him. He describes the joy and truthfulness of childhood as being as simple and enduring as are beauty and love, talking of his canvasses “Blooming with loving colours!” In Fafa 1, the joy and boundless happiness of childhood – its cherished memories and fond rhythms – led to Charles producing canvasses that blossom with floral exuberance – canvasses that positively sing with the beauty of his now much extended world.

Flowers bring joy wherever we find them.

If we cannot visit dream gardens such as Vita Sackville-West’s Sissinghurst in Sussex or Kairakuen in Mito or VanDusen in Vancouver, we bring blossoms indoors whether picked from our gardens or window boxes or in lush wild flower bunches from Nikki Tibbles at Wild at Heart in London or single headed sculpturals from Maurice Harris at Bloom & Plume in LA. Fashion designers are having a[nother] floral moment – embroidering, painting & beading flowers in a riot of colour palettes. Leading the floralist fashion pack are Charlotte Knowles, Richard Quinn & the legendary Valentino. Christian Dior’s love of flowers was at the core of his design philosophy. In Dior in Bloom, he is quoted as saying, “After women, flowers are the most lovely thing God has given the world.” 5

Interior designers splay flowers across walls and ceilings – plaster cast or blown glass, as in The Holy Deer in Rome – a former papal chambers transformed by Portuguese architect João Mendes Ribeiro – and the Jumeirah Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi by Susan Ross of DBI Design. Spas have long used flower-based treatments: here at The Ned in London, where Annee de-Mamiel rejuvenates with flower essences & herby serums: there at the Aman Kyoto, where coldpressed camellia oil is part of shiatsuinspired massage treatments.

The parfumier would be lost without their floral lexicon. The haute perfumer Roja Dove describes the essence of his Floral perfume as “as sweet, soft and gentle as that which might greet you as you enter a florist”. Edible flowers are so much a part of the chef’s ingredient box that we have come to expect violet, nasturtium, borage and other edible petals on our plates. At Hong Kong’s Skye, Michelin-starred chef Lee Adams adds flowers to the plate, fresh picked from his rooftop garden.

Blossom is beautiful wherever we find it. Blossom is colour; colour brings joy.

FAFA 2 V FAFA 1

Fafa Season 1 was a hug; Fafa Season 2 is a challenge – for the artist, for the viewer. The challenge for the artist was to explore colour not as theory but activity – a striving, as Wittgenstein argued, after conceptual clarity not scientific truth. If a ladder were needed, Charles would have used it then thrown it away.

There is risk in Fafa2 .

For Charles, the risk as artist was in seeking to enter a new zone of exploration where shades and tones of greys and whites break through more vibrant hues and tones. Not satisfied with depicting only the natural beauty and vibrant colours of Season 1, Charles wanted to enter a world where he could push further into the highs and lows of being a human, part of nature’s cycle of birth and death, growth and deterioration, as in the blossoming and withering of flowers.

The joyous expression of colour, which is for him what Fafa 1 was all about, is now more mystical. He has grown closer to Nietzsche’s maxim of the axiomatic acceptance for the artist that the presence of artistic faculty is needed to perceive the world of appearances.

In his essay for Fafa 1, Professor Peng Feng, Dean of the School of Arts and Professor of Aesthetics and Art Criticism at Peking University, spoke of Charles’s work as “elevating the Obsession of Dionysus (God of Wine) to the Dream of Helios (God of Sun)”. Professor Peng’s words are a re-evoking of Nietzsche7, a philosopher subconsciously rooted in Charles’s past; now physically in his present and future.

Speaking directly to Charles, the Professor tells him that he – the artist – is now no longer torn between dream and intoxication, but is in unity with the world. The Professor concluded his essay with words that can be read as a blessing, ‘It is overwhelming that mystic and minimalist now fuse into one.’ 6

He understood that the Professor was signposting a route that he had until then known subliminally but now could voice. He understood that his path as an artist was now as defined by the question that he came to call “What Would Nietzsche be Thinking?”. He re-read in translation Human, All Too Human, swiftly recognising that the Professor’s words led him to aphorism 149:

'The slow arrow of beauty. The most noble kind of beauty is that which does not carry us away suddenly, whose attacks are not violent or intoxicating (this kind easily awakens disgust), but rather the kind of beauty which infiltrates slowly, which we carry along with us almost unnoticed, and meet up with again in dreams; finally, after it has for a long time lain modestly in our heart, it takes complete possession of us, filling our eyes with tears, our hearts with longing. What do we long for when we see beauty? To be beautiful.' 7 The vale of tears, the longing for bliss. Nirvana. Utopia. Nothingness? Not one to drown in the gloom of the nihilists, Charles set out on a different path, to conquer his own fear.

Thus we come to Fafa 2: a risk and challenge for the artist.

Charles had decided to move on from the pure delight of the blossoming of spring and summer to the decay and loss that comes with the dying days of autumn and darkness of winter – the greyness, as Charles describes it.

He has faced risk before: in 2018, by asking “What is the colour of the wind?”

Without risk takers, our world would be much the lesser. Charles has taken the risk of pushing on into new territories. It is as if he has crossed off everything on his list of things to do and has reached the point where he is quintessentially himself. His 'portfolio of possibilities' 4, as Charles Handy put it so succinctly, is full. If the rainbow represents the full spectrum of colour possibilities, the artist wants now to enter the zones of shades and hues, too.

Charles knew with trepidation, but also certainty, that he would need to explore the complexities of colour thematics in a colour palette that would include the greys. He knew the risks for him of exploring this new palette. Greys are for the low times. That said, grey is perhaps only a shade – neither a colour nor even a hue. True, not true? The entirety of the truth for now remained elusive.

WHEN DID YOU LAST KISS THE CLOUDS?

Previous page:

Hues (2) 07:00 2020 acrylic and mixed media on canvas 52 x 38 in (1.5 in deep) 132.1 x 96.5 cm (3.8 cm deep) The question may be esoteric, but the intention is pure.

A long-time advocate of looking within, Charles is unafraid of questions that come from the ether. Chopra opened him to this.

In sayings such as, 'Happiness is a continuation of happenings which are not resisted', Chopra embodies all that remains good and true from the New Age movement. His return to roots to study ancient Ayurvedic practices healed many. Chopra continues to be relevant, his ChopraApp anticipating the global tuning in to meditation.

Just as Chopra became the keystone of the new age movement in the 1990s, so Massachusetts Institute of Technology & London Business School became the beating hearts of system dynamics – the places where I think software was developed to model the future. It was a momentous moment in time, before others moved into the space. Post millennium, fellow MIT academic, Albert Rutherford – at heart a Wh?sman in the George Wyllie tradition: one who asks and answers – posed the question: 'Why should this matter to you?' His answer, 'Because you are a system. You are a part of smaller and larger systems – your community, your country, your species.' 8

Charles was at the heart of these millennial debates. The questioning acting as a springboard for his still to come life as an artist. The question became: When did you last kiss the clouds?

This a direct reference to cloud mapping. In synchrondestiny, Charles found a discipline that realised his deep sense of connectedness – with others, with nature, with the cosmos – just as Tom Tykwer, Andy & Lana Wachowski realised in their 2012 film version of David Mitchell’s novel Cloud Atlas. The movie made visual Mitchell’s complex interwoven tale of reincarnation over several time periods – past, present and future – the actions of individual lives impacting one on another, shaping the future through acts of kindness, big and small.

Mitchell’s novel imagines time as reinforcing loops, a concept developed by ex-McKinseyite & MIT academic Peter Senge where, in a fifth dimension, ‘new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective

aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together.’ 9

For Charles, it was as if Haw Par Mansion had segued from a visual to a sound world. For him – set free – it became all about the music. In time, post MTV, the music fused with movement – his paint seems to dance on the canvas – the McKinseyite dotting the lines on the coloured maps in the cloud atlas.

In our constantly evolving, inter-connected world, Senge’s reinforcing loops – he spoke also of balancing loops – give us tools for learning that we can use to generate a newfound equilibrium. So it was for Charles. He took up the challenge that Professor Peng had put before him to lay bare the polar ethics of creativity – Apollonian versus Dionysian – the productive struggle between two poles that, as the Professor reminded us, Nietzsche reimagined from its ancient Sophoclean roots. In responding, Charles wrote:

‘The artist’s never-ending search for shades – tones and hues: warm or cool; lighter or darker – for colour, of which there is an infinite range, but never one single perfect choice. The artist continues to search. If not, why not? Risk is always present, but if art is not risk-taking – as it should be – what will it be?’ ii

Beauty in truthfulness…

The life we live – our lifeworld Lebenswelt 10 – is all we experience in the immediacy of everyday time, space and body. Lifeworld as a state of being, as analysed by the phenomelogists & geopoeticists envisions time, space and consciousness as interrelated. Lifeworld is the artist’s space. Through meditative practice, the artist comes to inhabit the very givenness, the presence of experience. The surface of the canvas not one but many layers; the latent energy of paint becomes body, plant, creature – otherness.

The deep ecology of the artist’s lifeworld shows the way for the inherent worth of nature, the cosmos, the human spirit – whatever is the focus of the artist – to a shared space. As people, we gain from this – we blossom, just as the flowers do. At pivotal moments in time, people across time zones and continents find commonality. This is the sociological concept of collective effervescence that Durkheim explored – what we more often now call the zeitgeist. The label matters not. What matters is the joy we take in recognising shared loves: for bao, for Bowie, for Buddhism. For local becoming global.

Above:

Last Night (1) 2021 acrylic and mixed media on canvas 30 x 52 in (1.5 in deep) 76.2 x 132.1 cm (3.8 cm deep)

THE LIGHT

Above:

Harvest Moon (7) 2021 acrylic and mixed media on wood panel 26 in diameter (1.75 in deep) 66 cm in diameter (4.5 cm deep)

Opposite Page:

En plein air, Deep in the Clouds (4) 2021. acrylic and mixed media on canvas. 42 x 68 in (1.5 in deep) 106.7 x 172.7 cm (3.8 cm deep)

The revelation is echoed in Nietzsche leading us to the beauty of the dawn. 'What do we long for when we see beauty?', he asks and answers with the truism: 'To be beautiful.' 7

SHALL WE NOT SHOW REVERENCE FOR THE SKIES ABOVE US?

Joy is in living. Charles calls his new palette Rainbow’s ink – a tribute to his beautiful wife, Rainbow.

While exploring the greys, Charles also wants to make sense of the whites – white as colour, but also as light. As God says, “Let there be Light”. In letting in the light, not all is lost: greyness is confronted; white illuminates the darkness.

Aware that white also speaks of the Chinese concept of emptiness – the space between; liminality – Charles knew for him that white would be uplifting. White is Light. White are the clouds above our heads. The clouds in the heaven to where our spirits rise.

Charles’s path to becoming an artist was not the straight high school to art school to studio route. His undergraduate training in philosophy challenged him to think hard. Charles is not only a philosopher. Past lives saw him as editor, business executive & social observer. He is as much at home in Hong Kong as he is in Kaohsiung, Vancouver or Sao Paolo. He is a global citizen; an intellectual whose mind is as curious as an innocent child. His background gives him a unique view of the world.

His background gives him insights into thought processes that others might struggle to understand at first or vocalise. Charles wants to chart new areas of the phenomenological traditions that underpin his conscious experience of painting. He wants to dig deep into the surreal experience that is his experience and awareness of humanity. He is both within and without – his conscious being directed on the object, the focus of his gaze intent on inhaling its spirit.

Charles’s longing for truth in beauty and beauty in truth led to Beauty Restored, the title of his final undergraduate essay in which he examined the hypothesis of the book 11 of the same name by Canadian philosopher Mary Mothersill. It is as if the quest for truth in beauty and beauty in truth has always been embedded in Charles’s work. His deep roots in philosophy underpin his working practice as an artist – considering and referencing philosophers’ viewpoints: Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Kant, Burke, Bataille…..

Bataille writes of flowers as being in an 'immense movement from earth to sky' – a fitting description of Charles’s work. For Bataille, “the sight of this flower provokes in the mind much more significant reactions … the strange privilege of revealing the presence of love.” 12

About the Artist Charles, (b1963) is a Hong Kong born contemporary artist currently residing in BC, Canada. His latest body of work is a deliberate attempt to break away from his former signature monochromatic works that explored contained emotions, now liberated with unique coloured brushstrokes and freely associated forms. from London Business School. He turned full time to his own art 15 years ago — establishing his own studio practice. Charles had exhibited in Hong Kong, Vancouver and Beijing previously.

His next show, Fafa2: When did you last kiss the clouds? (July, 2022) is a sequel to his last exhibition Fafa1: Why did I paint the flower pink? hold in Hong Kong, June 2020. When did you last kiss the clouds? CHARLES CHAU EXHIBITION Tokyo, Japan

www.charleschau.ca

July 2 (SAT) -3 (SUN), 2022 Morio Studio 1/F 〒107-0062 Pacific Arts Aoyama 1F 6-5-45, Minami-Aoyama, Minato, Tokyo

SHARED NOWNESS AND INTO THE FUTURE

If Zoom was the glue that connected us during lockdown last year, Netflix was the smörgåsbord, the banquet, the bounty. We gorged, we cried, we laughed, we shared – from Schitt’s Creek to The Queen’s Gambit to The Crown. The word, “Ew!” became a shared expression; chess became cool. These are zeitgeist moments: no need for explanation. Just the simple, shared joy of understanding the coded message.

We revel in the sheer joy of shared experience – the collective effervescence.

Fafa 2 immerses us in such a collective effervescence. The artist asks us to mine deep. He lifts the viewer into the clouds, up to the blue moon, into the branches of the trees. By the alchemy of paint in a master’s hand, we experience the scent of the blossoms, the softness of the petals, the sigh of the wind in the branches, the scudding of clouds across an azure sky and the magic of the moon, blue for one night only.

In a world driven by big data, hard politics & complex geo-economics, the artist reaches out a hand and draws us into the liminal place where we can be more. Heaven on the horizon.

Not that there are no other ways of re-mystifying. We know the power of loud, loud music – Wagner for some; Alice Cooper for others – or the craziness of Ibizan club nights, a rammed Pacha or Amnesia, everyone high on the moment. We know of the re-energising power of far-flung travel off-off-off the beaten path to Peru for wild swimming at Paracas or to Georgia for the architectural gem that is Tbilisi. Before it was about instant gratification, instant experience: me, now. We have evolved. Now, it is more about experience positively, responsibly – an inexplicable think-connectedness.

The pre-Covid world was bliss for some and, for others, the ecological extinction that is The Anthropocene. Covid put an end to so much, but it also opened us up to a gentler, more connected communitarianism. A pandemic is not the cure for climate change. There was too much loss; too much sadness. But we did reconnect - by virtue of necessity perhaps, but it went deeper than that. Now, in 2021 – and beyond – we look forward to post-Covid physical reconnections.

We have faith, love and hope.

“Are you looking for straight lines/In these liminal days/Come on let’s be dandelions/Scatter all over the place” iii Those lyrics from Emmy the Great paint a vivid picture of people scattering around the globe again like dandelion seeds. Not the diaspora, but people seeking new places. We will walk on that far-flung beach again; we will cram once more into hot shared spaces. Punch Drunk will entice us one more time to New York into its Macbethian world of Sleep No More. We will drink the witch’s brew as the chosen one - beckoned into her lair. We will re-enter the immersive world of The Lost Estate’s The Lost Love Speakeasy in deepest east London and hear a tale of love and hope retold. We will share food from each other’s plates again at Mere, Monica & David Galetti’s French/South Pacific Fitzrovian space.

We will find again joy in shared experience and hugs, above all, hugs.

Galleries, theatres, concert halls – the words roll off the tongue like rare exotica. In 2021, across the globe, we will reinstate such vocabulary into our new norm – Tokyo to Turin to Taipei. We will reemerge from the chthonic, phoenix like.

What would Nietzsche be thinking? He would surely cut through all the rhetorical questions – de-puzzle the aporia. He would restimulate our minds and reinvigorate our hearts. He would lead us back to the art space and ask us, “What do you see?” He would re-equip us for our new lives and set us on our new paths. Ars poetica: “A poem should not mean/But be.” 13 As a poem, so an artwork.

The artwork is Fafa.

1. Oscar Ho Hing-Kay, Art Criticism for the People: News Clippings of Oscar Ho Hing-Kay 1980-1990s, Typesetter Publishing, 2020 2. Polam Lau, It is All About Love, LeCadre Gallery publication, edition of 150, 2020 3. Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols,1889, first published 1889 translation by R.J. Hollingdale, Penguin Classics, 1968 4. Charles Handy, The Age of Unreason, first published in 1989, later addition Arrow Books, an imprint of Random Century Group, 1990 5. Alain Stella, Naomi Sachs & Justine Picardie + Nick Knight, Dior in Bloom, Flammarion, 2020 6. Professor Peng Feng, Dean of the School of Arts and Professor of Aesthetics and Art Criticism at Peking University, Charles Chau: An Artist’s Obsession and Dreams, 2020 7. Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, first published 1878, translation by Marion Faber & Stephen Lehmann, Penguin Classics, 1994 8. Albert Rutherford, The Systems Thinker: Essential Thinking Skills For Solving Problems, Managing Chaos, and Creating Lasting Solutions in a Complex World, VDZ,

United States, 2019 9. Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Random House, 1990 10. Edmund Husserl, Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, an unfinished 1936 book, first published in 1954 by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, second reprint in 1962, an English translation by David Carr, Northwestern University Press, 1970 11. Mary Mothersill, Beauty Restored, Clarendon Press, 1984 12. Georges Bataille The Language of Flowers from Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, University of Minnesota Press 13. Archibald MacLeish, Ars Poetica from Collected Poems 1917-1982, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1985

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