Gleaming Dreams is the first solo exhibition showcasing Joaquim Kuong’s recent artworks inspired by Josef von Sternberg’s Film Noir classic MACAO (1952), featuring mixed media paintings, porcelain and photographic installations, as well as prints. The exhibition attempts to recreate and reinterpret the movie-going experience by means of gleaming lights and colors. An artifact that links the various artistic expressions together is the “dream-catcher,” to highlight the fact that Macao is a place where dreams and reality may intersperse, and a haven where the old and the new co-exist.

About the artist

Joaquim Kuong is an assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Macau, and an amateur Macau artist. His passion for printmaking and painting stemmed in his encounters with the 19th century engraving illustrations by George Cruikshank in the Charles Dickens’s novels and with the Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints while he was pursuing postgraduate studies in the United States. With Mr. James Wong and Ms. Madalena Fonseca as mentors and friends, Joaquim has been making etchings, aquatints, woodcuts, and paintings since 2010s. He believes that even an arts and humanities researcher has an artistic side waiting to be awakened. Joaquim’s work has appeared in joint exhibitions in Macau and Thailand.