Moments of thought Born in Hong Kong and coming from experimental incursions into theater, video, and performance, Jamsen Law enjoys capturing in video that which is strange in the often tedious everyday life of those living in the big cities. “I believe that these strange aspects are created by gaps through which we fall into our own selves.… If we still have some subjectivity left, it is probably fragmented,” the artist wrote in a statement in 2003.
The fast-paced life, the mass displacements, and the infinity of superficial and/or fantasized relations brought about by new communication technologies emerge from the works of Law, who was awarded a residency at the Dutch WBK Vrije Academie during the 16th International Electronic Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil (2007). Solitude and unspoken anguishes arise out of the landscapes that he captures: a silent twilight falling over impersonal dwellings, the snow indifferent to human footsteps, the impassive sea.
A professor with the Hong Kong Art School, curator at the Hong Kong Art Centre, and former festival director, Law has developed a personal approach to diary-style video work, as written in the Essay by art historian Elaine Ng, who is the editor of the ArtAsiaPacific magazine, which features the production of artists from the region. Behind his style, she believes, there lies the artist’s wish to have spectators dive into an intense investigation of emotions expressed in a nonverbal manner, and which concern the “representation of indescribable desire.”
Further info on this artist available at the collection
