Beyond Memories

The floor tiles in various geometric patterns you might still see today in most old buildings in Macao have become something obsolete. Those old tiles are doomed to vanish as long as we demolish the aging buildings – they will become nothing more than rubbish. However, the dismantled tiles reincarnate when local artist Lai Sio Kit paints them so alive to express and overcome his homesickness.

If you know Lai well, then you will probably know his work is always about his metaphysical interpretation on overlooking rooftops, patterned bricks and red mud bricks. To be frankly, I am not the kind of person who would be sentimental for the past and yet Lai’s work often touches me and encourages me to look back. Sometime his artwork would remind me of an old house where I once lived in Guangzhou when I was a teenager. For some unknown reasons, the spatial arrangement and architectural features of the house would cross my mind when I look at his work closely, in spite of the fact that I only stayed there for a while and my memory of that house should be very vague. What strives me the most is that his work could bring back some cheerful childhood moments and I feel as if I were hypnotised. Perhaps, it is the subtleness of his work – re-connecting me with the house, which I might otherwise have forgotten all about. 

To my surprise, after obtaining his master’s degree from the Oil-Painting Department, Central Academy of Fine Arts in China, Lai chooses not to follow other’s path – projecting his emotions about Macao through eye-catching techniques and subject matters that could easily please the majority. Instead, Lai has been engaging into something different and unpopular – pattened bricks and tiles that might seems a bit tedious, and yet he has continued to paint them for almost a decade. In most of his work, you might find it unexciting at the first sight, but then later you would feel a sense of tranquility and a taste of vitality from these obsolete objects he paints, and that might keep you stand still. 

All that remains are memories is Lai’s latest works, a transcended version of what he has been painting – old-fashioned bricks and tiles, and that has become part of Lai’s unique painting language and symbols. Unlike the past, the audience needs to be more sensible and patient to appreciate his works. The objects he paints are no longer items we can name at one glance, such as a piece of rusty and rotten metal, bricks with nostalgic patterns, or moss-covered red tiles. The intriguing composition of colours in his paintings often urges us to think out of the box and be free from what we have perceived well. It also shows that Lai purely enjoys going back and forth between rationality and improvisation of how he plays with the colours as an artist, from which he attempts to trace back to the pleasure or irritability during his creative process.

‘My work shows how I think, which might not be well understand by all. Yet, there are still some certain points the audience and I might have in common and see in the same way. Well, at the end of the day, it is all about the attitude as an artist, and I do not really care how people think of my work. Now, the awareness of the value of collecting artwork is still very weak in Macao. So be relaxed. There are still people coming to buy my work from time to time,’ say Lai. Having returned to his hometown Macao for ten years, Lai is still devoted himself exclusively to painting. 

‘Just keep your head down and work hard. Don’t expect fame and fortune in return. When time is ripe, someone will invite you to exhibition and then they will collect your art piece,’ someone says. The above self-mocking words seem satire of our restless reality. Only those who always stay true, diligent and committed to their dream could go through all hardships and loneliness along the way. Most of the time, people would not see what you have gone through and struggled with, except the joy an artist might have after he or she obtains fame and fortune.