Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery is delighted to announce that the Guangdong Museum of Art is presenting an exhibition dedicated to prominent Venezuelan modern artist Oswaldo Vigas (1923-2014). Titled Reality is What I Imagine, the exhibition opens on August 15, 2026 and runs through November 22, 2026. Supported by the Oswaldo Vigas Foundation, the exhibition features a focused selection of significant works spanning seven decades, alongside a rarely seen collection of archival materials across two exhibition halls. As the co-organizer, we are pleased to introduce the trailblazing vision and art historical significance of this Latin American modern master to the Chinese audience.
Co-curated by US-based Venezuelan curator Gabriela Rangel and Chinese curator Jiang Jun, this exhibition opens a cross Pacific discourse that advances the contemporary Global South narrative through the examination of Vigas’s category defying practice, revealing a cross-cultural synthesis that offers a diverse, localized lens through which to examine the role of cultural continuity within the rich tapestry of global art. The two curators will take a deeper dive into this topic in the Art Talk held on August 16 at the museum.
"Vigas neither succumbed to the universalizing narratives of European modernism nor retreated into the nostalgic imaginings of provincialism; instead, he forged an artistic practice that could be characterized as an 'amphibian modernity,' one that was never fixed in a single state…he persistently interrogated a fundamental question: how can a society undergoing rapid transformation safeguard the vital cultural lineages that sustain it?"
-- Wang Shaoqiang, the Director of the Guangdong Museum of Art
“Moving freely across epochs and cultures, he refused to be categorized, unafraid to challenge boundaries imposed by Western modernism. His work is not just about affirming his Latin American identity based on a binary divide of self and other; it is a world where differences are reconciled, allowing us to reach deeper toward the origins we share.”
-- Catherine Kwai, Founder of Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery