Harmonious Society, London
The Fine Art Society, London

18th Oct 2016

18 October–8 November 2016 · The Fine Art Society, London

The Harmonious Society, Jacky Tsai’s second solo exhibition at The Fine Art Society, brought together eleven lacquer carvings. Western superheroes entered Chinese landscapes and theatrical interiors, encountering situations in which strength, status and familiar expectations could suddenly be reversed.

Harmony as a Question

The title places an ideal of coexistence beside images full of competing desires and uneven relationships. Tsai uses humour to open these tensions to interpretation. His characters share a world, but their presence together does not guarantee agreement or understanding.

The traditional medium gives these contemporary encounters a different weight. Carved ornament and layered surfaces draw the eye into scenes whose comic immediacy gives way to more complicated questions about dependence, ambition and cultural identity.

Heroes Away from Heroism

In Chinese Spa (2016), Superman is distracted from the role an audience expects him to perform. In One Night in Macau (2016), the supposedly invincible figure confronts chance at the roulette table. The Hangover (2016) extends the reversal into the aftermath of indulgence.

These encounters make the superhero fallible. By placing an instantly recognisable figure in an unfamiliar narrative setting, Tsai invites viewers to reconsider the qualities they associate with power. The humour depends on a shared recognition of the character, while the surrounding details keep the meaning open.

Coexistence and Responsibility

The exhibition’s concerns extend beyond individual desire. Welcome Refugees (2016) brings displacement into Tsai’s imagined pictorial world; Save the Last Chinese Tiger (2016) introduces the responsibility of protecting a threatened species. Tug of War (2016) gives competition a theatrical and deliberately improbable form.

Across these scenes, the meeting of East and West becomes a way of looking at human relationships. Characters may compete, seek refuge, become dependent on one another or fail to live up to their own image. Harmony remains something to negotiate, rather than a condition the pictures simply declare.

Contemporary Stories in Carved Lacquer

The contrast between a patient craft process and the immediate language of comics is central to the exhibition. Tsai’s compositions bring contemporary anxieties into an ornamental tradition, asking both the image and its material to accommodate a different kind of story.

The exhibition received contemporary coverage in The Guardian, whose illustrated feature offers a wider selection of works from the series.