Rex Chan | Portraits of the World's Skin

Gallery Hours: Wednesday to Saturday 10:30am–6pm

Venue: Fo Tan (address provided upon registration confirmation)

To Art House is a private venue. Advance registration is required for entry.
Register online: visit us

Portraits of the World’s Skin is the debut large-scale solo exhibition of Hong Kong artist Rex CHAN Hon Biu (陳漢標, b. 1958), presented by To Art House in collaboration with guest curator Zoie YUNG Wing Yi. This exhibition marks the culmination of an artist residency that began in 2023, providing a focused period for the artist to further his material explorations and conceptual inquiries. Featuring over fifty recent and selected works, the exhibition spans oil painting, Chinese ink, drawing, and collage, and stands as a testament to Rex's indomitable artistic pursuit.

Line drawing is fundamental to the artist’s visual language. Each stroke, shaped by deliberation and instinct, is treated as integral to the compositional process. Executed with clarity, openness, and ease, these gestures reflect his intuitive engagement with the act of mark-making. With a background in graphic design, he often centres his subjects against understated backgrounds, emphasising precision and restraint. Drawing from everyday experience and Chinese classical literature, particularly the mythical fauna and flora of the Classic of Mountains and Seas, he constructs a contemporary cosmology shaped by cultural memory and personal mythology. 

Guest curator Zoie situates his practice within the dynamic terrain of contemporary image culture, where the artist's works oscillate between the tactile and the virtual. The exhibition's immersive perspectives evoke navigation systems and aerial cartographies, underscoring his role as a distant observer and collector. Rex's beasts, branches, and biomorphic forms embody a paradoxical anachronism: rooted in Chinese classical cosmologies, deeply personal yet attuned to the visual languages of digital image culture. Portraits of the World’s Skin invites viewers to enter his expansive world, to traverse its shifting surfaces, and to consider how the act of drawing itself remains a substantial art form.