香港大學美術博物館

The number 8 plays a crucial role in mythology. In Asian art this can be seen in the 8 trigrams of the I Ching, the 8 Immortals, the 8 Buddhist symbols and the 8 Auspicious symbols. These interrelated elements are often depicted as a group of 8 in the form of a serial narrative, which are supplemented by motifs of pairs, figures or scenes from stories, landscapes, plants, flowers, animals, ornaments and symbols.To illustrate this point, nine objects—each consisting of eight sections or eight motifs—were selected from the UMAG collection. The items, including an eight-part panel with silk painting, each demonstrate the diversity and richness of serial narratives in Chinese art and craftsmanship. In addition to the narrative structure, these eight-part objects can be understood as components of superordinate systems. In the microcosm of their diverse details, they refer to the macrocosm of mythology, which results in a network of relationships that continuously refer back to one another.

COUPLET PAIR REBUS explores the principle of cause and effect in art, offering various approaches to this philosophical relationship. Based on the UMAG exhibition curated by Harald Kraemer, the COUPLET section is comprised of more than twenty calligraphic pairs of poetic lines, known in Chinese as duilian (對聯). Through the multi-layered texts, one discovers the multitude of voices that can be used to describe nature and the world and how content can be visualised through various forms of calligraphy. PAIR features artworks that form a balanced equilibrium through diverse visual languages along with objects that exemplify how mankind’s pursuits create objects in symmetrical harmony across genres. While works presented in the REBUS section form a network of diverse references that connect the objects. Individuals are then tasked with decoding these connections like a 3D puzzle. This publication features an essay by curator Harald Kraemer unpacking the issues of harmony, symmetry and c