留白 - Beyond Emptiness at the SOAS Gallery: Beauty, Breathing, and a bit of Incoherence

Written by Anon Yu Henriksen, Senior Staff Writer, BA International Relations and Korean.

At ‘留白 - Beyond Emptiness’ at the SOAS Gallery, Hong Kong artist and architect Raymond Fung exhibits ink paintings alongside architectural designs to draw connections between his two fields. 

"[…] white spaces are not dead blanks, but meaningful parts of the composition."

The exhibition takes its title from 留白 (liúbái), literally ‘leaving white,’ as a concept of embracing the beauty and potential of emptiness. This concept appears in Chinese and East Asian art, philosophy, and gardening. Fung argues that ‘to leave a space is to breathe,’ reimagining negative space in Chinese ink painting as an act of meditation; white spaces are not dead blanks, but meaningful parts of the composition.

Despite the titular focus on liúbái, it is surprisingly difficult to find usage of the technique in the exhibition. Some instances appear in his landscape work, but are neither striking nor frequent enough to sustain negative space as the exhibition's overarching concept.

Notably, in ‘Dynasties,’ Fung replaces the traditional use of negative space to depict fog and smoke with digital animation. In an exhibition centred on liúbái, such a choice feels like a missed opportunity to celebrate this aspect of Chinese tradition. 

This animation felt childish; however, Fung’s attempt to combine traditional art with modern technology is also admirable. In fact, the fusion of tradition and modernity is one of Fung's secondary themes, and while it justifies his use of animation, it also adds to the incoherence of the exhibition.

The exhibition’s most interesting works are ‘Introjection’ and the ‘Breathing’ and ‘Life’ series. In ‘Introjection,’ Fung uses X-ray images of his own body to create a landscape reminiscent of ink paintings. In the ‘Breathing’ and ‘Life’ series, Fung uses cling film to create enclosed environments where coloured inks evaporate and merge into plant-like textures. 

Negative space works better here than in ‘Dynasties,’ surrounding the leaf-like shapes with lightness that contrasts organically with the dark. The exploration of tradition-modernity tensions is also more successful in these works. 

Rather than adding digital animation to ink-painted backgrounds, Fung uses unusual materials to create surprising, innovative works. These works best demonstrate Fung’s creative contribution to ink painting.

However, the architectural sketches included in the exhibition unfortunately feel somewhat misplaced. While their inclusion is understandable, the exhibition fails to demonstrate the promised ‘harmonious relationship between architecture and ink art.’ A clearer link between the ink paintings’ abstract, floating imagery, and the structured and technical architectural sketches might have made the exhibition more cohesive.

‘留白 - Beyond Emptiness’ achieves two things: it combines modernity and tradition through experimental materials and creates a peaceful space to breathe. The colours, textures, and tranquil landscapes of the exhibited works offer an enjoyable escape from the noise of the rest of campus, despite being separated from it by no more than two doors. 

While the exhibition does not fully capture the beauty of emptiness, it offers somewhere to step back and quite literally breathe. As assignments and readings pile up, a trip to ‘留白 - Beyond Emptiness’ is definitely recommended. 

The exhibition welcomes visitors at the SOAS Gallery until 12 December.