朽木、馬首與奢華的對峙 Weathered Wood, Horse Heads, and the Confrontation of Luxury
Sculptures by Azai Lui (Simon) 雕塑作品
在那個時尚雜誌的彩頁與中環地鐵燈箱並行的年代，我將一尊尊充滿時間張力的「出土馬頭」，與閃耀著現代光輝的精緻珠寶並置，那種顛覆常規的視覺衝擊，確實為當時的時尚視覺帶來了一場前所未有的震撼。
那些彷彿剛從遠古廢墟中被喚醒的馬頭雕塑，在它們成型之初，我的雙手曾反覆撫摩、揉捏過它們身上每一道粗獷的肌理。在創作時，我近乎偏執地保留並運用了材質最真實的一面——那是泥土的芬芳、朽木的自然紋理，以及金屬經過歲月淘洗後那層厚重的鏽蝕感。
這不僅僅是一次商業合作，更像是一場大膽的破壞與重組。我想賦予這些雕塑一種原始、野性且不屈的靈魂，藉此作為我對當代美學的一次深切凝視，讓那份屬於土地的粗礪，去挑戰珠寶那份慣性的完美。
If aesthetics were a debate, I would prefer to have extremes collide within the same frame. The ancient versus the modern, the rough versus the exquisite, the ruins versus the opulent—when these contradictory symbols are forced to confront one another before the lens, the resulting visual oscillation is often far more powerful than simple elegance.
During an era when fashion magazine glossies shared the stage with the lightboxes of the Central MTR station, I placed a series of "unburied" horse-head sculptures side-by-side with exquisite jewellery gleaming with modern civilization. That subversion of norms sent a profound, refreshing shockwave through the contemporary fashion visuals of that time.
Before those horse-head sculptures appeared as though awakened from ancient ruins, my own hands had repeatedly molded and felt every raw, rugged contour of their forms. In creating them, I deliberately—almost obsessively—retained and emphasized the roughest aspects of the mediums: the earthiness of raw clay, the organic grain of decaying wood, and the heavy, weathered patina of tarnished metal.
This was far from a routine commercial collaboration; it was a bold act of destruction and reconstruction. I wanted to endow these sculptures with a primitive, wild, and unyielding soul, using the grit of the earth to challenge the habitual perfection of jewellery. It was, in essence, my profound gaze into contemporary aesthetics expressed through the language of sculpture.
