GONGKAN: ASYNCHRONOUS AFFINITIES

Tang Contemporary Art is excited to present the solo exhibition Asynchronous Affinities by renowned Thai artist Gongkan at the Wong Chuk Hang space in Hong Kong from March 22 to May 14, 2025.

Asynchronous Affinities marks a new phase in Gongkan's creative practice, exploring displacement to challenge social norms, cultural codifications, and moral values while nurturing transcultural interconnections and individual development. The exhibition invites viewers to explore the poetics of in-between frontiers, gaps, and links across cultures and generations, as well as the interstices of sexual and gender diversities.

The initial impulse of this solo show relates to the concept of “Right Person / Wrong Time”, reflecting misaligned affinities. As a Thai artist with Chinese cultural roots facing global discrimination and social changes, Gongkan aims to engage audiences in introspection about personal and collective emotions, expanding possibilities for individual and social relations.

Gongkan’s creations combine ambiguous social situations—celebrating, crying, polluting, dining—generating narratives rich with contradictions and paradoxes. For example, a majestic golden Thai temple prang tops a silver unidentified object in black cosmic space, and a birthday cake transforms into a smoke-polluting factory. His art offers visitors various ways to experience struggles related to oppression and isolation while fostering altruistic relationships.

Gongkan has developed a unique oeuvre depicting a boy as a representation of himself alongside multi-gendered and multiracial figures passing through teleportation holes, creating interconnections between dreamlike cosmic spaces, cross-cultural contexts, and natural elements. His “teleport art” has gained international recognition, featuring striking minimal patterns, simplified figures, and a subtle color palette. Spherical shapes—like planetary rings, rainbows, and balloons—serve as contact zones and fields of energy, expressing resistance, sadness, eroticism, and criticality.

Gongkan’s painting technique layers deep transitioning colors, pushing painting to its limits. This approach makes tangible the paradoxical experience of a deep virtual imaginary that feels real and profound, while also transforming daily life into an extraordinary journey.

In dialogue with his paintings, Gongkan created a trans-mutating assemblage of human and non-human components, such as a Buddha hand with a robotic arm holding a rose. These elements are linked through teleportation holes, presenting a whole transitioning entity rather than mere anatomy.

Expanding his artistic exploration of social and cultural critique, Gongkan has conceived a new installation featuring a Chinese table with a motorized center tray and culinary utensils for presenting “dishes” made of artifacts that reflect our consumption society: fast fashion clothes knotted like a bun, noodles made from magazine strips, and stacked CDs resembling Peking duck wraps. Through this unexpected installation, Gongkan raises profound questions about Asynchronous Affinities that affect individuals and profoundly impact people's lives amid cultural and economic growth, gaps, clashes, overlaps, and interrelations. Like many Thai people, Gongkan has deep Chinese roots from the Teo Chew community. Such transcultural links are vital for understanding the complexity of cultural diversities and the paths for young Asian generations to navigate their lives while addressing family and cultural gaps, gender differences, and rapid economic and digital growth in pan-Asian and global contexts.

The touching video Confinements to Expectation (2020) will also be shown, depicting the artist cutting ropes that tie him to his father, evoking complex emotional responses of bond, trust, and separation.

In Gongkan’s art, shapes and colors serve as transformative components allowing practices of passage and transition. They refer to suspended planets, crying eyes, or fluffy cakes, acting as “contact zones” traversed by intimate emotions and power dynamics. Gongkan, rather than promoting fixed identities and stereotypes about who “I am” or “who I have to be”, is creating and sharing a daring and generous “art of becoming”.