Living With Claustrophobia (an extremely brief history of Cassian Lau)
Growing up, I always felt torn between two cultures. I was
born in Hong Kong and immigrated to Canada when I was 5 years old. My parents
had very traditionally Chinese values which were instilled in me at an early
age. At thatime in the ‘70’s, there weren’t many Chinese people in Toronto. The
neighbourhood I lived in was predominantly occidental Canadian. I was thrust into a world where I could
not understand the language and was bullied every day. The thing I had to learn
quickly was English so that I can exchange profanities with the neighbourhood
children in the only language they understood. My sisters taught me to read in
English using comic books. Very early on, I was introduced to the bold shapes
and colours found printed on the comic pages. The sheer power of form, the
intensity of a brushed line, the dynamics of characters and buildings and
superheroes and intergalactic space monsters interacting with each other were
incredible to absorb. I must have had thousands of comics.
I guess I was one of the first groups of Chinese in Hong
Kong who considered themselves Chinese Canadian. I cannot and will not deny
that I am Canadian because growing up and being educated there; I am who I am
today because of that time in my life. However, I am first and foremost Chinese
as well. This is my identity crisis. But perhaps not. I am lucky in that I can
view what is going on in Hong Kong, in China, in the World from a unique
perspective. I can understand things from a Chinese perspective and also how a
western perspective can view the same thing and walk away with totally
different conclusions.
My wife and I started a retail fashion company when we got
back to Hong Kong after finishing university. We have a great passion for
fashion. Our dream back then was to bring something different to Hong Kong ;
something to break away from the monotony. We brought a lot of new designers to
Hong Kong. We met a lot of fantastic and odd people. We met a lot of talented
people and a lot of people who believed they were talented.
We hosted an art show in honour of one of the labels we used
to carry. We flew 32 people in from all around the world to participate in the
show. I learned so much from that experience. There were so many fantastic
pieces of art. Being surrounded by such great works would inspire anyone to
pick up a brush. As such, I began to paint again.
My style may be considered claustrophobic. This aesthetic is
a conscious nod to the claustrophobic cityscape in Hong Kong and most modern
cities. My work draws inspiration from all art that has affected me. I take all
the information we are bombarded with everyday and try to translate some of it
into my paintings. Perhaps the compact placement of visual elements in my
paintings and the occasional nervous lines are a direct result of living in a
city filled with high levels of daily stress.
Allegory is another tradition that is explored in my work.
Ever since the first cave man picked up a rock to scratch images onto cave
walls, art has been used to convey stories. It’s fascinating to incorporate
story telling tricks and techniques developed hundreds of years ago by great
masters into contemporary pop painting.
All art is important because all art serves
purpose on some level. The grand tradition of Pop is to reach the masses. As
art continues to expand the human experience in the 21st century,
much of it is not meant for the masses. Highly conceptualized ideas are
difficult to relay to everyday people, as many are not educated in the language
of art. This is especially true in Hong Kong where art holds little meaning to
the general population. My wish is to make art that everyone can understand and
hopefully enjoy. |
