Xavier Cha’s video work Ruthless Logic, shown in Hong Kong’s Empty Gallery, is set in a peach-hued, illusory world where two men are locked in a struggle that is, at first glance, chiefly physical. The two combatants—martial artists German Cheung and Rafael Reynoso—face off in Cha’s dreamscape, oscillating between tense contests and calm training routines.

“Ruthless Logic” was Cha’s first exhibition in Asia. She utilized local resources in Hong Kong to bring her video to fruition, with several of the city’s film industry veterans tapped for production, designing the action choreography, directing the photography, and more. The work was filmed at Shaw Studios, a relatively new site of the legendary enterprise established by the Shaw brothers, who were behind over two hundred martial arts films made from the 1960s onward. The stagecraft techniques used in Hong Kong action cinema, such as wire fu—martial arts sequences requiring wire-work for added drama—were used when making Cha’s video.

Raw physicality is one focus in the artist’s film. After a brief scene where Reynoso rests his head against Cheung’s shoulder from behind, both men standing and drenched in sweat, our view cuts to Cheung’s suspension in mid-air, left leg flexed for a kick, with Reynoso arching backward to dodge the attack with incredible athleticism. This scene and several others are filmed in extreme slow motion to bolster the emotional intensity as the duo lock horns. The endless battle is punctuated with moments of respite, with sounds of a heartbeat and deep breaths layered over high-contrast shots of clouds. 

In other chapters where the action isn’t quite as slowed down, Cheung and Reynoso trade jabs, kicks and knee strikes with seemingly no endgame. The speed of playback is manipulated constantly to transform what would have been glimpses into periods of intense concentration. We see close-ups of strained sinews and musculature, such as when the artist homes in on Cheung’s neck, collar bones and pectoral muscles. Reynoso takes a blow to his jaw, spewing strands of spit and flinging droplets of moisture into the air as the flesh of his jowl ripples, though we watch this motion unfold in reverse, with the energy released during the strike being sucked back into Cheung’s left fist.

As punches connect, kicks land and knees find home on an opponent’s body, we can’t help but feel the damage being inflicted on soft tissue and bone. And yet there are moments of physical connection that hold a different sort of tension. In one instance, Reynoso grips the left shoulder of Cheung, compressing what’s beneath his fingertips, and it is unclear whether this grapple is one of offensive engagement or a signal—a yearning—for tangible connection. Later in Ruthless Logic, about a minute before the film ends, the grip is answered, with each man holding onto the other’s forearm, fingers sinking into flesh to tether the two, possibly revising a contest of strength into an affirming linkage.

More dramatic still is when Cheung runs full-speed for a bull charge into Reynoso’s torso, wrapping his arms around his target’s body, sending both tumbling on the ground, with Reynoso’s dreadlocks whipping through the air. This takes place during the only soundless segment in the entire film. With excessive momentum, they roll through one of the round, white portals in the landscape. As the two settle, with Reynoso pinned beneath Cheung, the latter whispers, “Help me.”

Cha prefers to leave the reason behind Cheung’s plea ambiguous. Yet the context seems to exist somewhere between calculated strikes and visceral appeal for interaction, between violence and vulnerability. The artist repeatedly slows down the action so that we can soak in the emotional aches of two men locked in rivalry and pursuit. Not only does Cha adapt the syntax of choreographed martial arts to show us the purity of its motions, she also manages to embed an emotive trial within the two fighters’ skirmishes even though there is no apparent narrative. What we see in Ruthless Logic is the artist’s distillation and subsequent mastery of time-tested movie magic.

Brady Ng is ArtAsiaPacific’s Guangzhou desk editor.

Xavier Cha’s “Ruthless Logic” is on view at Empty Gallery, Hong Kong, until June 2, 2018.

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