Black Hole

Christopher K. Ho

Curated by Mo Kong

April 14-May 18, 2024

Below Grand Gallery is pleased to present Christopher K. Ho’s latest project Black Hole. This Swiss Army Knife-like sculpture illustrates Ho's experience when he moved to Hong Kong, where every object was given multiple functions and every space had to be foldable. The combination of everyday objects resembles a personal entertainment center used during the pandemic, which becomes Ho’s spiritual refuge while trying to integrate into Asian society. The metal cut-outs held by the photographer’s boom arms depict the process of a hedgehog morphing into a fish, and the continuous line connecting all the cut-outs was used as a guide to distort each as if it were making a quantum leap into the following shape. The identity of Asian Americans has always been caught in-between; we are considered outsiders in the United States, but “too Americanized” in Asia, in each case a minority. Yet there is no discrete identity for the Asian American, as in each case, the image is distorted in relation to a cultural event horizon.

Christopher K. Ho (b. 1974, Hong Kong) graduated from Cornell University with BFA and a BS in 1997, and from Columbia University with an MPhil in 2003. Solo shows include CX 889, Vancouver Art Gallery (2022); Marvin ❤️ Henry, 56 Henry (2021); Dear John, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York (2019); Aloha to the World at the Don Ho Terrace, Bronx Museum, New York (2018); CX 888, de Sarthe Gallery, Hong Kong (2018); and Privileged White People, Forever & Today, New York (2013). Group exhibitions include The Salesman, 56 Henry, New York (2023); Lustrous like plastic, Bard College CCS Hessel Museum, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY (2022); Any Distance Between Us, RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island (2021); and Meditations in an Emergency, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2020), among many others.