KWAI FUNG HIN ART GALLERY G/F, 20 ICE HOUSE STREET, CENTRAL, HONG KONG RAFFAELE ROSSI (Born 1956, Venice) Perhaps it is Raffaele Rossi's inexhaustible fascination of Venice with its intricate system of canals that imbues his paintings with its shimmering, translucent aura, its concave and convex canvases. The way in which Rossi uses indistinct lines and silhouettes that seem to disintegrate before one's very eyes are all reminiscent of the transitory nature of water, of its inability to hold a form for longer than an instant. The very images he tends to use - boats, vessels, cups - are themselves irrevocably connected to water. It is this connotation, along with the hazy figures and forms, each of which flow and melt into one another, that generate the sense that they, along with everything else in the world are subject to continuous metamorphosis. Through these connections Rossi is able to harmoniously combine strains of mythology and religious doctrine - Charron ferrying the dead across the River Styx, the legendary cup that holds the water of youth and knowledge, and finally the idea of the purifying powers of water itself - symbolic of transformation and rebirth.