Cassandra Lau graduated from CUHK with MA in visual culture studies in 2019 and obtained Visual Art (BA) with education diploma at Hong Kong Baptist University in 2014. With 10 years studies of art and design and working experience in interior design and art education, inspired her focus on the topic of space, develop and emerge a construction way on her paintings. By taking daily life as subject matter, concerning our living environment in this city, she used to express her compressed feeling through her paintings and soft sculptures.

Cassandra focuses on the local typical issues as the concepts and more specifically on crowd and limited spaces for reflecting Hong Kong contemporary life. Recently she tries to show her feelings and thoughts which is the atmosphere of mentality in this city.

Message to viewers:

Everyone likes and enjoys beautiful scenery, romantic landscape and waterscape. For capturing the beauty moment of nature, we will pick up our camera, take photos and record it. Sea, sky, cloud and mountain are the main subjects in the landscape photo as people observe and capture the natural scenery in front of them, also take pictures at eye level mostly. Rock and sand are under our feet, on the ground which are ignorant. But I am the opposite, admire the subtle and neutral color of the rock and the rough, jagged, cracked texture of it even though it is simple and plain. Because It shows an aesthetics of imperfection and the untranslatable impression of the poetic loneliness and solitude in the landscape. These elements of age, time and life cycle reminds me a lot.

I understand and remind myself the simplicity, purity of life and the minimalistic concept through focusing on the texture of mountain/ cliff/ rock and the painting process. The uneven, jagged texture is the marks of age. Nobody’s perfect, but we all have value. Keep learning to embrace our imperfection and accept the real us from the concept of Japanese *Wabi- Sabi culture. There is another perspective in aesthetics under the philosophy of Wabi-Sabi

*Wabi originally described the loneliness of living in nature, far from society; describing the more positive aspects of living alone in nature: a quiet, rustic simplicity. Sabi, on the other hand, find beauty in old age, in a weathered character, focusing instead on the serenity that can come with time, when inevitable wear becomes a patina, and scars become signs of experience.

給觀者的話:

風景優美、景色怡人、海天一色等的風景都常常都使人提起相機拍照留念，皆因想留住最美的那一剎。海、天色、雲霧、遠山這些能抬頭觀賞的景色，常常都是相中主角，而被踏在腳下的一片石崖、一堆沙石，驟眼都是平凡鎖碎不起眼的配角，但這正相反地吸引著我。沉穩而自然的山石顏色有著一種簡樸踏實的殘缺美，地質的紋理則帶有一份孤獨、凋零的感覺，在訴說時間與生命的流動和循環。這些簡單自然的東西教我反思更多。

靜望和繪畫著山脈/崖/石面的肌理和質感，提醒我學習欣賞和接納事物的不完美、 質樸和單純的一面。粗糙而自然的質感是歲月留痕的引證。人亦無完美，接納和擁 抱自己的負面情緒也不是一件壞事。學習「侘寂」(Wabi- Sabi)* 的文化和欣賞方式 讓我們學懂接納和放下更多，更從另一個角度去理解美學。

*註:「wabi」是指獨自一人，或孤獨 (wabi shi 意指「獨自」)。詩句中的「孤獨」這個字一般是 指簡單、謙卑，以及與符合自然常理的事物。它同時可以指一種單純、不加修飾之美(僧侶的生活 沒什麼需求)。至於「sabi」則意指時間的經過、變老的過程，以及萬物飛逝的性質。