2023

Bricks, Acrylic paint
11.5 x 21.3 x 9.3 cm

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Reiterating his interest in the expansive stairwell, Lai presents A brick on the parapet (2023), and Bricks on the crossbeam (2023). Over the years, Lai has produced a large series of brick pieces, such as the monumental Vertical (1996), that represents the beginning of Lai’s artistic career, or the poetic A Corner (2019) that is first shown at Kirishima Open-Air Museum. In recent years, Lai has been producing a number of brick pieces that are on the verge of becoming danger, such as A Brick on the Parapet (2020), first shown at Lai Chih-Sheng’s solo exhibition at Alien Art Centre, Kaohsiung. The brick pieces in It’s a quiet thing pertain firstly to Lai’s extended interest in the construction material—he was for 13 years working as a professional bricklayer—and, just as many other works included in the current exhibition do, pertain to a heightened, intensified sense of the space. The classic minimal gesture of placing one common object upon another functions here as a reminder of the architectural space’s qualities, and of fictional yet earthly, tangible dangers. One can see written on A brick on the parapet the number 58; also on Bricks on the crossbeam the number 10-1. The former depicts the charged percentage of Lai’s cellphone battery when he was colouring the piece; the latter marks the location of the piece: 1st floor, No.10 Sik On Street.

2023.05.25-07.08 “It's a quiet thing", Kiang Malingue, 10 Sik On Street, Hong Kong