Text excerpts on Yip, Lap Wing
Yip, Lap Wing addresses the relation between human and nature, and the dramatic environmental changes that are caused by human activities (...) Through the discrepancy between his cheap materials and the status of the objects he selects, what is shown as part of our civilation(’s history) is questioned, in part through subtle irony
Ulrich Meyer-Husmann, curator, Bellevue-Saal Wiesbaden, Germany
Yip, Lap Wing presents works which initially might appear to be press photographs; actually they are photographs of Styrofoam artefacts that in turn had been inspired by found media imagery. Tests of atomic bombs in Pakistan, the crash of the shuttle Columbia in February 2003: Traces of destruction appear in Yip, Lap Wing’s work like silver linings on the horizon. Indeed, the artists would like his work to be read as an expression of ambivalence.
ub , art critic, Wiesbadener Kurier, Germany
Yip, Lap Wing grasps an athmosphere that in this instance radiates from a landscape, but which he uncovers in other sujets as well. He is not distinguishing between familar, traditional imagery, and the sights that have been provided to us only through the innovations of contemporary technologies. His works are more than athmospheric objects. Also addressed is the Eastern Asian world view, as it integrates with Western thought (the artist is familiar with both directions), invoked are the media world’s Potemkin’s villages (something isn’t necessarily what it’s facade indicates), and he also deals with art itself as a subject of original thought and experimentation.
He shows in his work how narrow the boundary between fiction and reality may be. In this specific work, he shapes nature with materials that couldn’t be more artificial – styrofoam, Plexiglass, neon, etc.
The viewer is led astray. Is this object part of a faraway planet, a view of a desert on earth, or an element of a Japanese stone garden?
This ambiguity is part of Buddhism, and artists as Marcel Duchamp have consciously used it in combination with a subtle irony, which can also be discovered in Yip, Lap Wing’s installations.
J.M. Toussaint, art critic
Yip, Lap Wing juxtaposes selected objects and materials to create an awareness of the process of civilsation. Grounded in local and cultural references, he invites sustained attention. As other artists apply color and shape on a canvas, for his art he uses the associations and culturally determined habits of interpretation that are attached to certain materials, objects and conditions (...)
Martin Damus, art historian, critic and writer, Germany
My work does not present a specific result, everything moves in a hypothetical space. Reality must at all times be questioned.
Yip, Lap Wing