‘Pockets of Want and Need’, by Kin Ting Li - at South Parade

21 November 2024 to 11 January 2025 South Parade

Hong Kong-born, London-based Kin Ting Li’s semi-abstract oil on canvas works implicitly depict the mutability of bodies, which change out of desire or necessity.

The abstract forms present themselves as humanlike, or at least covered in flesh, some adorned with tattoos, with the appearance that they’re capable of healing and mutating, almost wriggling around in the oil on canvas.

Flaps and folds, suggestions of ears, eyes, and nostrils, the occasional hint at an orifice, Ting Li’s works are only superficially abstract. What they indicate, what they point to, is real, and we can see parts of ourselves, our bodies, locked in the canvas. 

What the figures are incapable of doing, unlike our bodies that they resemble, is growing, healing, changing, and mutating, despite looking like their might. Some of the figures circular, rolling nature express this mobility, others that appear to have legs or limbs, meandering through the canvas, picking up scars and dents as they go.

This may not seem like a compliment, but Ting Li’s works someway resemble early AI depictions of bodies and faces: misplaced mouths and eyes, misplaced teeth, with the grotesque resemblance to human features that plunges the figures deep into uncanny valley. 

Some of the works are growing out from the canvas’ limits; ear-shaped abstractions overextend the rectangular boundaries, invoking a common myth that ears grow with age (it’s simply gravity that pulls them down, same with noses), but really indicating that the abstract forms Ting Li has brought to life are now growing and changing out of his control. A fascinating, endlessly viewable series of works.