Enter the Forest at the Darkest Point

Ora-Ora is pleased to announce a new solo exhibition by UK-born, US-based artist Stephen Thorpe titled Enter the Forest at the Darkest Point. The title of the exhibition is drawn from a quote by US mythologist and writer Joseph Campbell, who urges us to “enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path.” In so doing, we find what American poet, Robert Frost, termed the road “less travelled we learn to find our truest selves through a constant process of internal death and rebirth”. The show will open between November 24, 2022 and January 8, 2023 and present a new body of work created over the summer of 2022.

 

Having taught at the former Hong Kong campus of Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) as a Professor of Painting for several years, Stephen Thorpe returns to the city with a new body of work solely featuring his acclaimed “corner” paintings, this will be the first time the artist presents this aspect of his practice in a holistic, immersive manner. Surrounded by richly-coloured walls and an enticing wall graphic motif designed exclusively by the artist, the corner paintings question the concept of our own interiority, our own psychic space.

 

In the words of Ora-Ora co-founder and CEO, Henrietta Tsui-Leung, “Stephen Thorpe’s interiors are epic journeys into our real selves. Enter the Forest at the Darkest Point raises the stakes even still further, enacting the primeval drama of the forest.” Dr Tsui-Leung continued: “Stephen Thorpe is an exciting talent whose work is tremendously popular with our collectors. Although we have shown Stephen’s paintings twice this year, at Art Basel Hong Kong, and at KIAF in Seoul, we are delighted to be presenting him for the first time in our new Tai Kwun gallery.”

 

Stephen Thorpe has won acclaim for the exuberance of his opulently furnished interiors, creating a landscape and mood which sees the corner not as a dead end but the primary catalyst for an honest mental narrative. In this exhibition, he references the noble tradition of European tapestries, depicting with lavish detail the finely detailed, sinuous luxury of the Gobelin world (a French family who produced characteristic tapestry in the mid-15^th century), creatively transferring woven imagery from thread to paint, and from wall to floor.