“Have we met before?” may sound like a cliché pickup line, but during the pandemic, local ceramic artist Scott Chan (陳建業) imagines the blank faces hidden beneath masks. With the pandemic lasting over three years, smiles under masks are rare, and people have become strangers to each other; whether it’s strangers on the street or even colleagues and friends who used to see each other daily, during the “social distancing” period, everyone’s faces seem blurred in our minds.
Scott uses a mischievous imagination to add features to the pairs of eyes he sees while eating, commuting, and wandering the streets every day, as well as creating 101 sculptural ceramic faces for family and friends based on his subjective impressions, making the best of a bad situation during the pandemic. The artist jokes, “Taking the bus and subway is the best. Staring contest with strangers, definitely tongue-tied under the mask; by the time I get back home, I already have several sketches.”
As for his old friends, Scott refuses to use “likeness” production, instead relying entirely on his own subjective impressions. He said, “There is a friend who looks like a silly tiger dog, so I created a face that looks like a tiger dog for him.” He believes that imagining all his friends during the epidemic will help solidify their friendship.
In fact, Scott has been creating art on “bills” since 2013 – taxi receipts, tea restaurant takeout receipts, convenience store receipts, bank deposit slips, etc. are all his creative media, and he has developed a habit of creating one piece daily, now for 10 years. The human face is the most common theme, and during the epidemic, he transformed it into this ceramic face.
Although sketching portraits may come easily, pottery making is not about speed, but rather a matter of patience. Shaping by hand involves rolling clay into strips and stacking them, then slowly smoothing the seams; as for the shape of the pottery made by pulling, it also requires adjusting the shape before carving the faces, but such a lengthy process allows Scott to imagine each face more intricately.
Feel free to visit the attic space of foreforehead in Sham Shui Po, where you can meet the characters who have crossed paths with Scott. Perhaps you will even say, “I feel like I’ve seen him somewhere before.”
“Have I seen you somewhere before?” Scott Chan Solo Exhibition
Date: From now until August 14
Time: 1:00 pm to 7:30 pm (Closed on Mondays)
Location: foreforehead, 132B Kilung Street, Sham Shui Po, Hong Kong
Image source and learn more: foreforehead
