About

Kwok Tsui (b,1989)

Hong Kong, China

My practice is an autobiographical exploration of my experience as an immigrant, examining themes of displacement and diasporic existence through painting.

Working primarily through subtraction, I remove paint to reveal light and form, allowing shadows to emerge within the structured surface. This push and pull creates a tension between presence and absence, belonging and disconnection, while forming a contemplative space of retreat and encounter. 

I work at scale. The muted, largely monochromatic surfaces are composed of thin layers of paint that reveal traces of previous iterations and identities. Lines repeat across the surface in a unified horizontal direction, shaped by deliberately controlled brushstrokes. This offers me a sense of structure and order, both within the process of making and within the painting itself. 

The repeated lines form grooves and recessed spaces that hold paint, creating a framework for gesture, light and composition. The repetitive physical process becomes a way of marking and commemorating time: the years I have spent away from home and the isolation that has accompanied my experience of immigration. Through this process, I use painting to build an interior place, a space that holds memory, emotions and time.

The works express a sense of loss and the repetitive, cyclical nature of time, where days and nights merge into one another through solitude and displacement.The recurring circular form references the moon and my connection to ideas of wholeness within East Asian sensibility. For me, it becomes a quiet symbol of guidance, hope and spirituality, expressing a longing for direction and connection.