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Just shortly after writing my view on Tobias' second show "irreality" posted here earlier in the blog (in Chi), I came upon Tobias' article of "HK Special Art Region" in the Dec. issue of Yishu. In the article, Tobias has singled out a few artists names, other than Luke Ching or Tozer Pak of Hong Kong, he specially mentioned about Guangzhou artist Cao Fei, which illustrated prefectly the point I made in my article on the significance of Cao Fei in the show. To Tobias, "Cao Fei makes extraordinary films and photos, not only capturing the feelings of his time, but also giving the viewers a sense of overdosing on the environment, by creating some of the most intriguing works in contemporary art today." Yet, to Tobias, he still finds it "amazing that an upcoming artist like Cao Fei, whose work is influenced by her immediate environment yet functions in every international context, has never been exhibited in Hong Kong." This is exactly this "amazing" which is my point, that it seems so obvious, for most Hongkonger artists(in my opinion), has a distaste of Cao Fei's style, as shown in the video picked for "Irreality". Thus it seems a natural (or at least not to any degree surprising) fact to me that it wasn't/she hasn't been exhibited in Hong Kong before. It has the very typical exaggerated style so many mainland artists share, which somehow successfully drawn international attention and praises that were similar to Tobias'. Yet Hongkonger artists mostly dislike such too obvious, deliberative/provocative artistic means as a sort of going international, chasing after fame strategy and sometimes arouse even despises. There is this "amazing" taste-gap between Hongkonger artists and the Guangzhou artists, as well as between the international's and the local's. A likely channel that Cao Fei got exhibited in Hong Kong is in those commerical galleries, that attend to the taste of the foreign buyers or investors, which however have not much relation with the local art scene in general.
From the only posting in the blog of "Trading Places"(a satellite event association with 2nd Guangzhou Triennial D-Lab/「交易場域：珠江三角洲的文化想象」第二屆廣州當代藝術三年展衛星專案), I find one thought worth quoting here. "Commerce may have blurred or even erased residual boundaries within the Delta, but this need not be the future for culture."(頻繁的商貿{或}使珠江三角洲演變成一個經濟共同體，漸漸模糊了粵港澳三地的邊界{;}但三地的獨特的文化色彩{未必需}隨經濟整合而被湮沒。){按:我這裡依英文版作準}
What Tobias has done in "Irreality" (or earlier "Power Plays") with the inclusion of works like Cao fei and other mainland artists, in this perspective, is still far from a blending of culture, towards some larger regional or ethnical/national identity. The significance, as I have mentioned in the earlier entry on Tobias, is just a due recognition of the existence and the opening up of tastes (fullest in its plural sense) for the local artistic mindset. Hopefully, in this process, we could also see a broader acceptance/appreciation of different finer/low-key/less exotic artistic sentiments from the international audiences on Hong Kong art.