Tim Yip: Blue
Artist: Tim YIP
Curator: Mark HOLBORN
Organizer: Hong Kong Design Institute (HKDI)
“I like blue, especially deep blue. Highly saturated, transparent, it seems to lead to another dimension and never die out. It is the devil and hope as well, with the wheel of memories floating within the boundary of existence. There is nothing familiar in the deep blue sky which is as pure as transparent glass and covers over all things. At that moment, it makes me feel that the whole sky is almost unreal.”
— Tim YIP
“Tim Yip: Blue” is a retrospective exhibition of Tim Yip held on the 16th November 2018 in Hong Kong at the invitation of Hong Kong Design Institute. The exhibition is curated by Mark Holborn, a British curator and publisher who has collaborated with Tim on several exhibitions over the last decade. Tim chose blue as the theme of the entire exhibition and takes the vision to another layer of mysterious reality beyond three-dimensions. The images in this exhibition become the gap between space and time, and superimpose all the memories of human civilization from a long time ago onto images from another parallel space, letting viewers look for the meaning of time interpreted by Tim through images.
The images run through the whole exhibition space, including the muse Lili, costumes and video. Whether for film, stage or gallery, each costume designed by Tim has its unique rhythm combining the real and virtual. The glowing colours and fantastic patterns, whether luxurious or simple, can always reveal the tempo that Tim describes. As for art costumes, Tim always believes that there exists amazing room for imagination and he tells stories through the costume details. When viewers approach to look closer at them, the power of abstract details will also increase, and the viewers enter the space of Tim’s endless imagination before they know it.
Unlike previous exhibitions, a pregnant Lili and Robot Lili have been placed in the final, mirrored room of the exhibition hall. This work creates a dimension of the future. The installation is set up by Tim to arouse the viewers’ limitless curiosity and questions. At the present and future, in humanities and technology, everyone has their own egos. Within the infinite life cycle, is there another “you” in the unknown region about which humans are curious? Does that “you” undergo numerous divisions? When we are immersed in the mysterious blue world, we enter a boundless zone together; a void where we can discover the secrets of human history. This is also the theme that Tim wants most to explore in his exhibition in Hong Kong - to travel to an unknown region in the mysterious blue, and to ask of the present era, where science prevails: “What is the situation of human beings in the future? When can humans find the new dimension of the universe and explore the future again? The mystery of outer space stems from the memory and illusion of form and thoughts. In the world beyond science, what is virtual? What is real?
