OSCAR CHAN YIK-LONG

The fact that Oscar Chan Yik-long titled one of his installations “Awful things happen in every apartment house” might give you some insight into his work. Inspired by the emotion of fear and dark tales from mythology, Chan’s drawings and paintings often feature ghosts, skulls, demons and disembodied heads, some of them screaming in terror.

These works have struck a nerve both in Hong Kong and internationally. In 2015, he had a solo exhibition at Observation Society in Guangzhou entitled The Devil, Probably. A solo show at Things That Can Happen in Hong Kong followed, and Chan has since participated in group shows at Para Site and Gallery Exit. Abroad, his work has been included in exhibitions in Paris, Shanghai and—last year—the Busan Biennale in South Korea.

His work is now being shown by Gallery Exit at Art Basel in Hong Kong and he is making works for a group exhibition in Nice hosted by the roving Circonstance Galerie. Unlike many of Chan’s past works, which feature black ink painted on white canvas, paper or silk, some of these works will include colour. “Colour is a new direction for me,” he says. “I’m studying how to [use] unfamiliar materials and formats in my artworks. And recently I’ve been addicted to studying how directors of horror films create tension and use colours, lights and sounds for effects. It’s really related to my artistic practice.”