Gallery Vacancy

About the Gallery
Gallery Vacancy was founded in November 2017 by Lucien Y. Tso in Shanghai, firstly in a historical residential building in the Former French Concession Area, engaging with local history, human interaction, and social discourse through a series of exhibitions and projects done by international artists. After a seven-year operation, the gallery has moved to its current location in the Xintiandi Area and continues its mission to showcase practices of concept-oriented programs to seek a parallel reality in response to the rapidly developing landscape of cultural and urban environment in Asia for the next generation audience. The name of the gallery states its ambition, meaning the space waiting for fulfillment by artists with ideas and collaborations from a cross-media approach. To re-connect and reconcile, the gallery space offers a non-hierarchy platform to advocate the voices of young talents and to bring together perspectives of established and emerging artists from different contexts.

About the presentation
Gallery Vacancy will present a solo project by Michael Ho exploring the experiences of the Chinese diaspora and the historical phenomenon of yellowface. Ho’s body of work is inspired by the stage persona of Chung Ling Soo, created in the early 1900s by a white American magician, William Ellsworth Robinson. This legendary yet mysterious figure brought Robinson international fame while evoking the exotic enchantment of Orientalism. Through his painting technique of working on both sides of the canvas, Ho deconstructs the act and illuminates the ambivalent space between myth and reality.