Lambent Fire: Ray Hwang: Curated by shuang cai
December 21, 2022 - January 29, 2023
Installation Views
Press Release
In the spirit of the holiday season, LATITUDE Gallery is honored to present Raymond Hwang’s first New York solo show – Lambent Fire. The exhibition collects 12 of his recent pieces and will be on view from Dec 20th to Jan 30th. 

The title of the show—Lambent Fire—came from Ray’s artistic technical endeavor. Ray employs a unique layering of colors for most of his paintings. Like a pit of a lambent fire, the subtle glow casting from the dimmed stage reveals a genuine emotional history, portraying a modern myth. Ray specializes in incorporating different textures and techniques creating splendid but hearty stories. The unraveling of stratified narratives appears in the modest strokes of the airbrushes and the scored drawing figures sailing on the layered paints. Like actors in a play, the elements and techniques in Ray’s painting are directed by an unreliable narrator who loathes the idea of rehearsal. As a result, the visuals are iterative and eventually rendered with differing levels of information. 

Ray references playful relics from his past—such as playground dragon sculptures, power ranger action figures, or the durian fruit. And the hydras, as one of the protagonists in Ray’s story, are a symbol of our inner contradictions. In Ray’s eyes, each head of the hydra has its individual life and interacts with the world in distinct ways yet ultimately is part of one large being. Are there quarrels? How do they make up? Each head represents different parts of ourselves. Therefore, the existence of hydras stands for the estranged relationships we have with the paradoxical parts of ourselves. Constantly exploring the topic of multiplicity, code-switching, internal drama, and cross-cultural contradictions, Ray presents his struggles and contemplations through an imaginative and humorous lens.

With great enthusiasm and earnestness, Ray radiates warmth and light to our gallery as Lambent Fire did to the weighty topics. LATITUDE hopes to share Ray’s heroic adventures, robust energies, and passionate emotions with you in his works.
 
Curation and text by shuang cai
Works
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