common

Afterimage
Past Exhibition

Waku

Afterimage

15 Oct–13 Nov 2022

Gallery COMMON is pleased to present “Afterimage”, a solo exhibition by Waku. On view from October 15 (Sat) to November 13 (Sun), 2022, the show features a series of works that represent a new direction within Waku’s continued exploration of neon light.

In this new series of works, Waku takes existing current-day symbols that many of us are familiar with and visually compresses them. Through this act he strips the symbols of their textual and pictorial legibility, a crucial aspect of their communicative function.

While working as a neon sign craftsman, Waku began to feel “discomfort with the fact that forms have singular meanings”, and has until now produced abstract works in an attempt to extract the element of light from its form. “In order to allow for our attention to remain on the light itself, the shape of the neon tubes can not be explicit or concrete,” says the artist; as such, his past works have been based on hand-drawn compositions subjective and abstract enough to allow for the neon light to convey itself without being reduced to any specific symbol.

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