MATTHEW
Tsang Man Fu

Where the End is the Beginning

Wooden chairs transformed into fragile charcoal no longer able to hold any weight; delicate foil fragments seared with burnt patterns drifting in space; a block of ice melting as a flickering video of burning embers plays across its surface. In these and other artworks, Matthew Tsang Man Fu shows us the slow process of not just decay and ruin, but change and regeneration. 

The works explore ways to metaphorically represent the passage of time and human life experience through the transformation of material states; wood to charcoal, charcoal to ash, ice to water, water to ice. There is an energy and vitality contained and unleashed in the processes of burning, melting and freezing. So while the remains may seem at first glance to be lifeless, on closer inspection these objects are still actively undergoing the process of change but in a fundamentally longer geological time span, one in which we can place the scale and melancholy of our life times.

Kay Mei Ling Beadman