Archive-9

Archive
Number 9
2025-03-02
Edited by: LEE KA-SING AND HOLLY LEE ARCHIVE
kasingholly.com kasingholly@gmail.com
JUNGLE LINE
The Tempestuous Life of a gallery
written by Holly Lee, reprinted from DOUBLE
DOUBLE 0528 2021
Sweet Halloween to Sweet Home
(Lee Ka-Sing Gallery 2000-2005)
I first saw the name Candy Factory Lofts in the
real estate page, from either the Globe & Mail
or the Toronto Star. It was a big advertisement,
selling the candy factory as a converted loft,
a six-storeys post and beam condo that would
generate 121 spectacular suites. Located
downtown on Queen Street West, though still
close to the centre, it was quite a few blocks
west of Bathurst street - an area considered
at that time shady, and a bit off the grid.
When I mentioned this location to my friend,
who’d lived in Toronto for almost ten years, he
advised me to stay away. In fact my friend lived
in Markham, a city of the Greater Toronto Area,
where we also set foot after arriving in 1997.
(above) Cover of DOUBLE DOUBLE issue 0828 2021,
featuring a hand-crafted wooden sculpture of
“L E E” by Ka-sing, for the logo of Lee Ka-sing
gallery. (below) A photograph of the Candy Factory
Lofts taken in 2021, looking across from the north
side of Queen Street West. From the main entrance
and after climbing a flight of stairs, the previous
LEE KA-SING gallery was situated at the first unit on
the right.

We always thought we lived in Toronto - yes,
but in the GTA, and under the recommendation
of our friend, in Markham. In the past we knew
nothing about Toronto, except it was considered
the largest, busiest and most populous in
Canada. Out of ignorance we hardly knew
Ontario. I came from a small city of six
millions and my brain is always capsulized
by the concept of small territory, compact,
accessibility and high density. Ontario is
huge, but downtown Toronto had only a million
people, even if you add up the population from
the Greater Toronto area, when we settled down
in Markham in 1997, the number was still less
than five million.
My curiosity of the lofts urged me take a slow
trip by subway and then streetcar to Queen
Street West. Not that bad really, by New York
standard, we’d seen worse. Candy Factory Lofts
was located just west of Trinity Bellwood Parks,
a pretty calm area, I found not only the name
sweet, the price of the converted lofts was also
attractive. From our experience it’s not unusual
for people to live in lofts in New York, in fact a
few of our artist friends did, but we also knew
LEE KA-SING gallery in 2000, looking out to Queen
Street West.
the idea of “real” loft living was very new in
Canada at that time, and this might be the
beginning of such a trend that people would
find exciting. And we certainly thought that,
not just any people would love to live in lofts,
but those who made an effort down to the open
house that weekend, in late 1998, would be the
kind with unrestrained character and venturous
spirit, perhaps a bit like us?
After we acquired a small unit (the closest to
the public stair exit), and hindered by several
delays, we finally moved into the Candy Lofts.
We used it as a photo gallery. It was just the
millennium, but within a short few years we
saw big changes. First the opening of the
cool Drake Hotel on Valentine’s Day in 2004,
followed by the art-teeming Gladstone Hotel.
MOCCA, the former Art Gallery of North York
relocated also to “Queen West” in 2005 and
instantly became an art magnate. Suddenly
the area where we moved into turned hustling
and bustling, full of people visiting, eager to
emerge and share a contemporary life of art and
culture, with good wine and dine. The stretch
from where we anchored kept shifting west, and
came to be known as West Queen West - the
fashion and art district in downtown Toronto,
flourished with galleries, boutiques, Café, bars,
designer stores. People came here to entertain,
to gallery opening parties, to drink to socialize
and to have fun. In fact, a decade-and-a-half
ago Queen Street West was named by Vogue as
one of the coolest streets in the world, and we
were in the middle of it.
The transformation of Queen Street West, in
retrospect, was the beginning of Toronto’s
downtown housing market boom. Looking
from another angle, it was also the gradual
degradation of a once vibrant, multifaceted,
invigorating neighbourhood to a maze of multistoried,
formulaic and disengaged condos.
All it took was twenty years, we witnessed the
so called gentrification as more developers
scurried in to share the pie - and took away
the buoyancy, the aesthetically stimulating
character of the street.
In 2000 we launched our gallery on Queen
Street West. It was one of the earliest, if not the
earliest to operate in that area. Once a candy
factory (Ce De Candy Factory 1963-1988)
churning out the quintessential Halloween
candy known as “Rockets”, the converted
lofts now looked large and spectacular, with a
soaring ceiling height from 12 to 14 feet, sand
blasted exposed brick, plank hardwood floor,
beams and columns and sleek finishes. Since
the suites were designed like open studios,
before we moved in we were allowed to make
basic changes in the floor plan. I remember
talking to the sales executive, someone who
called Ann on the loft site. Laying down our
floor plan on the marble-top kitchen island we
penciled to reposition light tracks according
to the need of our gallery. Apart from that
we didn’t change much. Our loft was on the
first floor, the smallest unit in the building
occupying a little under 900 square feet. The
day we moved in we were totally awestruck by
the beautiful finishing, the exposed original
brick wall, the polished hard wood floor, and
the most impressive feature of the studio - the
huge arch window opening to the Queen Street.
Even though it was a double pane window,
we could still hear the squealing cable cars
running up and down the street.
When we moved into the loft we adhered a big vinyl
lettering of OP fotogallery on the large window, but
the building management forbade us doing it. By
making use the family name, we decided to change
the gallery name to LEE fotogallery. Ka-Sing handcrafted
a wooden sculpture of “L E E” and sat it on
the window ledge. The sculpture, which could be
read from both inside and outside, could then serve
as a signage. In 2001, we decided to revise the
name straightly to “LEE, KA-SING gallery”, the
“L E E” was still serving as a logo.
While running our gallery in the Candy Lofts
we saw an influx of galleries along the West
Queen West strip. From across our window
operated Angell, Spin and New Gallery. To
the west of Shaw Street was an important line
up of Clint Roenisch, MOCCA, Edward Day,
Stephen Bulgar and Paul Petro. Further west
followed by KM Contemporary Art Projects
(Katherine Mulherin first opened BUSgallery
in Parkdale, later adding venues such as
1080BUS, BOARD OF DIRECTORS and some

more others on Queen Street West). The long
stretch of QSW carried on with more galleries,
a mixed bag of commercial and artist-runs
like Deleon White, Luft, Propeller, Zsa Zsa,
InterAccess, 1313, Circa…and some others
that I’d forgotten. And oh, I was just reminded
that of a gargantuan 3,000-square-foot gallery/
studio called the Thrush Holmes Empire at
Queen and Dovercourt. Its splashy, red carpet
style inaugural opening in 2007 created quite a
stir.
We were in fact existing in the heyday of West
Queen West, sharing part of its illustrious, over
decade-long art activities and history.
A narrow window onto Asian photography
We opened City Detour, our inaugural
exhibition in the Candy loft in February 2000.
Connecting and acknowledging our roots
from Hong Kong and Asia, we also aimed
to bridge up activities from the Hong Kong
gallery (OP fotogallery, partially supported by
art funding) to the Toronto gallery - although
totally self-financed, we still named it as OP
fotogallery, Toronto. From the existing work
of five photographers, we curated a show
exploring the universal theme of city. How to
define a city in visual terms, especially your
city, in the context of being there, seeing and
peeling the many layers off its core, tasting,
nibbling different textures and in doing so,
retelling the experiences through photography?
In the exhibition there were four Hong Kong
photographers: Patrick Lee, Malaysian
Chinese, a medical practitioner who uses
photography as his spiritual therapy; Ringo
Tang, a talented commercial photographer
showing strong tendency in pursuing fine art;
For the first two years, we placed advertisements in PHOTOGRAPHY IN NEW YORK.
PNY was a bimonthly guide publication for gallery goers and collectors, in which
every issue covered a comprehensive listing of photography exhibitions in New York,
as well as over a hundred photo exhibition ads. Every time when we visited New York
it was our habit to grab a copy of PNY and used it like a bible to navigate the great
number of photography exhibitions in the city.

From Erotos to Obscenities
CITY DETOUR, our inaugural exhibition in 2000. Work by Patrick Lee, Ringo Tang,
Leung Chi-Wo, Lee Ka-Sing, Yao Jui-Chung.
Leung Chi-Wo, an active visual artist who had represented Hong Kong pavilion at the Venice
Biennale in 2001; Lee Ka-Sing, photographer and artist and one of the founders of DISLOCATION
magazine in Hong Kong. The fifth photographer was Yao Jui-Chung, a Taiwanese artist who also
represented Taiwan at the Venice Biennale in 1997. The scale of the exhibition was not large, but
it had introduced to Toronto audience some of the movers and shakers in contemporary Hong Kong
and Taiwanese art. From here, we were able to open up a small window to include distinguished
Asian, especially Japanese, Chinese and Korean artists, such as Araki Nobuyoshi, Hideo Suzuki,
Xing DanWen, Tseng Kwong-Chi and Park Hong-Chun. We felt glad that Asian contemporary
photography, hot and much sought after in the established art world but largely unfamiliar to the
Canadians, had finally made its presence in this multicultural city, little realizing that its voice
had a hard time to be heard, and a market that was almost nonexistent.
Ka-Sing has long been familiar with the work of Nobuyoshi Araki through publications. Araki’s
books and monographs, from the Xerox Photo Album in the early 70s to the collaboration with
Juergen Teller in the publication Life and Death in 2020, has reached well over 500. Ka-Sing
came to know Araki personally in 1997, when he was invited to be one of the judges along with
Araki, Iizawa Kohtaro (one of the top photo critics in Japan) and Fumio Nanjo (renown Biennale
curator) for the annual competition of the Tokyo-based Cosmo Photography. After our gallery
opened officially in Toronto, we began planning to bring Araki’s work as our presentation during
CONTACT, the Toronto annual photography festival in May. We were able to show Erotos - a suite
of over forty-eight black and white 20 x 24 inch silver prints, which was shown earlier in the 1998
São Paulo Biennial and kept in the Luring Augustine Gallery in New York. We were so thrilled
and filled with excitement to be able to show work of this influential Japanese photographer in
Toronto. What we did not expect was the lack of response. Despite the fame and stardom he
received in Asia and Europe, it seemed that not a lot of people knew about his work here in
Canada. In contrast, during the festival two individuals came up to us at different times, with the
expression of shock and awe, unable to believe that they were able to find Araki’s work in town. Of
course, after careful inspection, they wasted no time to collect some work.
Yao Jui-Chung (on left) in front of his photographs. Yao Jui-Chung’s photo exhibition Savage Paradise was
held in 2000, while we were still living in Markham. The night after the installation, we all went for dinner
in a Chinese restaurant in Markham, where I parked my car right outside. After dinner getting back to our
car we were alarmed that the car’s window at the passenger’s seat was broken, Yao’s new cameras and
my video camera were stolen at the same time. It was our carelessness despite warnings from our friends
about keeping things that looked valuable out of sight when we left the car. To compensate Yao’s loss, we
proposed to purchase two of his large photographs, one of which featured a Sauroposeidon strolling in a
deserted amusement park.
Erotos, an exhibition by Araki Nobuyoshi

Quebec connection and International touch
Tseng Kwong-Chi 曾 廣 智 (1950-90) was active in the New York art scene in the
1980s, his circle of friends included Keith Haring and Cindy Sherman. The exhibition
Citizen of The World was selected from his famous self-portrait series East meets
West.
Apart from selling art, I guess our true
nature is clinging closer to exploring and
making inquiries into visual art, especially
photography, its expression and development.
One of the guide lines we took in the gallery
was never shy away from showing works that
were notably controversial and challenging.
After Araki, we were able to work with
Canadian photographers Diana Thorneycroft,
P.E. Sharpe and Simon Glass. We’d also
introduced Xing DanWen, her China Avant-
Garde series, Hong Kong’s Almond Chu
and Evangelo Costadimas - the latter EC is
Canadian, moved to Hong Kong and produced
evocative work. He is deeply inspired by
Araki’s way to working.
When still in Hong Kong running NuNaHeDuo (DISLOCATION) and the OP Print Program, we
came across many photographers from abroad, Serge Clément was one of them. A Canadian born
in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, less than an hour’s drive to Montréal, he was our connection to other
Montréal photographers such as Michel Campeau, Normand Rajotte and Bertrand Carrière. From
the mid-nineties Serge Clément traveled to Hong Kong many times to explore and photograph
the city, he was not an unfamiliar figure and had been considered one of the many local active
photographers around that time. We featured his work in DISLOCATION and invited him into the
OP Print Program. From photographs taken in Hong Kong and Shanghai between 1995 and 2002,
he produced the book Parfum de Lumière / Fragrant Light in 2000, and a nine-minute animated
version for the National Film Board of Canada (2002). When we set up the gallery in Toronto we
wanted very much to exhibit his work, but he had already been represented by another gallery so
it would be a conflict of interest. The 8 x 10 photographs in the OP Print Program were exempt
from this rule as they were made outside of Canada. So fittingly we exhibited his work in the 810@
LEE series, along with other artists who had committed to the OP Print Program.
In the early years of gallery practice, we were also keen to exhibit international photography. Our
good fortune of meeting Laura Barrón led us to a stellar cast of other Mexican photographers, and
as a result we were able to organize a show dedicated to Mexican Contemporary Photography in
Still-life: stilled lives, an exhibition by Diana
Thorneycroft.
Seven Visions: Mexican Contemporary Photography (2002).

New Voices from Toronto
Seven Visions: Mexican Contemporary Photography (2002).
Photographs by Laura Barrón.
2002. Later we also met and arranged shows for Sadegh Tirafkan (1965-2013), an Iranian wellknown
photographer who had produced profoundly beautiful work tightly-knit to Iran’s history,
culture and politics. Our curiosity ushered us to explore further, to another unfamiliar territory
like Poland, where we befriended the editor Ireneusz Zjezdzalka (1972-2008) of the Polish photo
magazine Fotografia, and showed his black and white work in our gallery. With his help, we came
to know a few more photographers; Patrycja Orzechowska, Pawel Zak, Wojciech Wilczyk and Jerzy
Wierzbicki, all of whom I briefly wrote about in the October 2003 issue of FOTOPOST. Two years
later, after the gallery had moved to Gladstone Avenue we were able to show a substantial body
of Patrycja Orzechowska’s innovative and beautiful work during the photo month of CONTACT in
2007.
We have always loved the energy and
new perspectives a younger generation of
photographers could bring. We explored
the city through photography exhibitions in
commercial galleries and artist-run centres
and encountered a wide range of works. We
met Jennifer Long, a young visual artist who
obtained her BAA (Photographic Arts) at
Ryerson University, and worked at Gallery 44
at that time. It was probably through Jennifer
that we succeeded in organizing PUNCH in
the Winter of 2002 - an exhibition of seven
budding photographers, all of whom studied in
the Ryerson University. The participates were
Chris Curreri, John Fiorucci, Jennifer Long,
Hugh Martin, Lindsay Page, Tim Saltarelli and
Balint Zsako. We became so infatuated with
the freshness of the work that we decided to
produce PUNCH II in 2004, and subsequently,
merely a few months after we’d relocated to
50 Gladstone, we put up the phenomenal
PUNCH III in 2006 - filling all two floors with
remarkable photographs by ten promising
photographers. It was also after the first
PUNCH exhibition that we approached Balint
Zsako to represent his work, and organized the
show Zsako vs Photography in the Fall of 2003.
(above) PUNCH 2002, installation view.
(opposite page, below) PUNCH 2002. A postcard we
produced to announce the exhibition.
(below) PUNCH II (2004) A postcard we produced
for the exhibition. At the back we announced the
project of an E-Zine we were to publish for the
photographers involved in the PUNCH exhibition.

Reaching out
Our gallery started to build bridges in as early as 2000. We reached out to the Japan Foundation
Toronto (JFT) and co-presented with their gallery, which was then at Bloor Street West, to host
the Japanese photographer Hideo Suzuki’s work. JFT had a huge gallery space and it could be
partitioned into individual rooms for exhibitions, projections, seminars or other functions. Suzuki’s
exhibition Family of Fantasy (May, 2000) comprised several bodies of work and in the end we
had to take up most of the space. Advancing to 2002, Juno Youn, an artist and also a committee
member of Gendai Gallery in Don Mills contacted us for organizing an exhibition of Araki’s work
from our inventory. We had collaborated with them to present Erotos in their gallery.
Xing Danwen: China Avant-Garde, 2002. 100 photographs from OP Print Program.
Exhibition Invitation card by Gendai Gallery for Araki’s show Erotos in 2002
Amidst larger exhibitions we ran a smaller project called 810, showing photographs only in the
size of 8 x 10 inch. We had a whole collection of OP Prints in this format and were still working
with photographers to produce prints fit into this project. In our gallery, we used the rear portion,
a little corner space to feature these works. We called it 810@LEE. Similarly, we exposed these
works outside the gallery, in a furniture and interior design retail store called Fluid Living on
Queen and Bathurst, and we called it 810@FluidLiving. Life was complicated knittings of big
and small things. The next big thing we attempted was participating the Toronto Art Fair (2002).
Exposure is the key to open more doors, more possibilities - but that does not necessary guarantee
success.
Toronto Art Fair 2002 catalogue. LEE Ka-Sing Gallery featured two images
inside the brochure - left: Diana Thorneycroft; right: Araki Nobuyoshi.

Smaller art fairs in alternative venues, such as hotels were all the rage in that era, and that spread
over to Toronto in 2004, when the TAAFI Collective (Toronto alternative Art Fair International
Collective ) kickstarted in October that year, almost around the time of the Toronto Art Fair. It
used two hotels, The Drake and Gladstone and twenty two rooms to present art. Some rooms were
rented as ‘booths’ to galleries while others were sponsored to show artists works. We participated
this little event and transformed room 202 of the Drake Hotel into a makeshift gallery, displaying
art in the sitting room, bathroom and on bed. The opening was jam-packed with people, the
fair became the talk of the town, it went on for four days. We were excited and exhausted all
the same, meeting and talking to fairly large number of people, and during the confusion, we
became distracted and less watchful, as a result we turned out to be victim of the event - some of
Simon Glass and Diana Thorneycroft’s 8 x10 inch prints were stolen in the opening night without
knowing until the next day. Though very upset we considered that a good lesson learnt, hoping our
ill fortune would stop there, it did not.
It’s time now to talk about another art fair, which took place south of the border. At the end of
Summer in 2005, we laboured over two months to prepare for the Affordable Art Fair in New
York. We paid for the fair and shipped all the artworks, even booked the hotel the fair organizer
recommended. But the day we departed for New York we were stopped at the border, immigration
won’t let us through because we were attending the art fair, which meant we were doing business
in the United States. We didn’t know that we have to have a business partner in the US in order
to participate the art fair, so we were sent back. It was a big blow, we felt demoralized for the rest
of the month. The first opportunity to work internationally had vanished along with a big chunk of
money. Was it human error or fate?
Perhaps it was both. But what we didn’t know was we were about to change, it was the harbinger
of a brave new beginning, an audacious transformation, a herculean step away from our safe and
comfort zone.
At one point, the failure to attend the art fair in New York had hastened us to hammer our decision
of a significant move. We needed a place with greater visibility and more open access. It ended
up in the Spring of 2006, despite all the obstacles, we managed to relocate our gallery a few more
blocks west just before Dufferin street, to 50 Gladstone Avenue, where we continued to operate
actively for the next twelve years.
TAFFI 2004 at the Drake Hotel. We paid for a corner suite which had a sitting area,
a bedroom and a shower room. Virtually every space was utilized to display artwork
from the roster of artists we brought in. I remember P. Elaine Sharpe even attached a
short fiction on the shower room’s glass door.
(following pages) A selection of 10 posters we produced for publicity of our
events. These posters were 12 by 18 inch, printed on photographic paper.
Normally only one copy for each was made.

An incomplete list of exhibitions
from 2000 to 2005
Feb 1-Mar 4, 2000
City Detour (Inaugural Exhibition): Patrick
Lee, Ringo Tang, Leung Chi-Wo, Lee Ka-Sing,
Yao Jui-Chung
Mar 8-Apr 8, 2000
Hideo Suzuki: pater noster
Apr 12-May 6, 2000
Wong Hung-Fei: Mammals
May 10-Jun 17, 2000
Nobuyoshi Araki: Erotos
May 12-Jun 3, 2000
Hideo Suzuki: Family of Fantasy
Jun 21-Jul 15, 2000
Ngan Chun-Tung: Vintage Photographs 1950-
70
Aug -Sep 2, 2000
Yao Jui-Chung: Savage Paradise
Sep 6-Oct 28, 2000
Amond Chu: Life Still
Nov 4-Dec 23, 2000
Bodywork: Mamoru Horiguchi, Nobuyoshi
Araki, Almond Chu, Evangelo Costadimas and
Paul Sabol
Dec 27-Feb 15, 2001
Wong Hung-Fei: Fish, Dream, Mammal

Feb 22-Mar 24, 2001
Masahiko Yamashita: Labyrinth
Feb 28-Apr 21, 2001
PAELLLLA 1, 2: Paul Sabol, Lau Ching-Ping,
Serge Clement, Yao Jui-Chung, Lee Ka-Sing,
Evangelo Costadimas and others
May 2-Jun 9, 2001
Yau Leung: Photographs from the OP
Collection
Jun 23-Jul 28, 2001
Ying-Kit Chan: Industrial Landscape
Aug 29-Oct 6, 2001
Mamoru Horiguchi: 1/8
Oct 13-Nov 24, 2001
Light Canvas: Christopher Doyle, Allan Edgar,
Holly Lee, Bohdan Vandiak, Wong Shun-Kit,
Yao Jui-Chung
Nov 24-Dec 15, 2001
Ringo Tang: Autonomous City
Dec 19-Jan 26, 2002
Punch: Chris Curreri, John Fiorucci, Jennifer
Long, Hugh Martin, Lindsay Page, Tim
Saltarelli, Balint Zsako
Thru Mar 9, 2002
Yao Jui-Chung: Libido of Death
Mar 13-Apr 20, 2002
Michel Campeau: Arborescences

Apr 25-May 18, 2002
Threats and Promises: Rineke Dijkstra, Toni
Hafkensheid
May 22-Jun 15, 2002
Xing Danwen: China Avant-Garde (93-98)
Jun 29-Jul 27, 2002
Seven Visions: Mexican Contemporary
Photography - Mauricio Alejo, Laura Barron,
Ximena Berecochea, Mariana Gruener, Gerardo
Montiel Klint, Enrique Mendez, Hildegart
Oloarte
Sep 4-Oct 12, 2002
Diana Thorneycroft: Still-life: stilled lives
Sep 7, 2002
Simon Glass: Seventy-Two Names of God
Oct 26-Dec 7, 2002
Hideo Suzuki: The Sun of Eden Series
Dec 14-Jan 25, 2003
Stone and Water: Elaine Ling, Katherine
Knight

Feb 1-Mar 29, 2003
Leung Chi-Wo: City Mapping: Rough Cuts
Apr 23-Jun 14, 2003
Tseng Kwong-Chi: Citizen of The World
Jun 18-Aug 2, 2003
Balint Zsako: Zsako vs Photography
Sep 10-Oct 25, 2003
A Souvenir of Place: Park Hong-Chun, P.
Elaine Sharpe
Nov - Dec, 2003
So Hing Keung
Jan 16-Feb 29, 2004
Punch II: Chris Curreri, John Fiorucci, Jennifer
Long, Lindsay Page, Tim Saltarelli, Balint
Zsako
Mar 23-Apr 3, 2004
Virginia Mak: Oh, Ominous Sunshine
Apr 23-Jun 12, 2004
P.E. Sharpe: unanswered: witness
May 19-Jun 12, 2004
Sadegh Tirafkan: Iranian man (Part II), Secret
of words
Jun 15-Jul 31, 2004
Hiromi Hoshino: Impressions of South China
Jun 15-Jul 31, 2004
Simon Glass: Tohu Vebohu
Sep 8-25, 2004
Dislocation Re-launch, 79 artists
Sep 8-Oct 23, 2004
anothermountainman: redwhiteblue
Mar 5-Apr 2, 2005
Bettina Hoffmann: sweets
Apr 9-30, 2005
(Sur)real - Ireneusz Zjezdzalka, Patrycja
Orzechowska
May 3-28, 2005
Patrick Lee: Look!
Postscript
In The Tempestuous Life of a Gallery, Holly wrote about the
Lee Ka-sing Gallery from 2000 to 2005, located at the Candy
Factory Lofts. In 2006, the gallery relocated to a three-storey
building on Gladstone Avenue, occupying two adjoining
units, numbers 48 and 50. We used the third level as our
living quarters, while the second and ground floors served
as galleries—four large exhibition spaces in total. Multiple
exhibitions often opened on the same evening. We named the
building INDEXG, with the “G” standing for Gladstone. The
Lee Ka-sing Gallery was on the second floor, while the groundfloor
space, G+, functioned as a storefront gallery showcasing a
mix of media from both local and international artists.
Holly had planned to write another article covering this chapter,
but sadly, she was unable to begin, though she had gathered
some materials. The Lee Ka-sing Gallery operated at this new
location from 2006 to 2008, for two and a half years, before the
second floor was converted into a bed and breakfast. Since 2008,
I stopped representing artists, resuming my identity as an artist
rather than a dealer. The storefront gallery remained open for
twelve years, closing in 2018—a year before COVID. Afterward,
we shifted our focus to archiving, organizing materials from the
past fifty years.
Holly wrote The Tempestuous Life of a Gallery in 2021,
published in DOUBLE DOUBLE, issue 0528-2021, as part of
her Jingle Line series. This series will eventually be compiled
into a book. In the coming days, I hope to fill in the missing
chapter, writing about INDEXG, where over 500 exhibitions
were installed, along with numerous related events.
This year, we launched Edition K&H Archive, a print program
that transforms archival materials into editioned prints. As part
of this initiative, we have selected five memorable artifacts
from the gallery, mentioned in this article, to be included as
collectibles. (Lee Ka-sing, March, 2025)

Lee Ka-sing gallery: Sadegh Tirafkan, exhibition promotional poster (2004). Edition K&H Archive
https://oceanpounds.com/products/lee-ka-sing-gallery-sadegh-tirafkan
Lee Ka-sing gallery: Yau Leung, exhibition promotional poster (2001). Edition K&H Archive
https://oceanpounds.com/products/lee-ka-sing-gallery-yau-leung

Lee Ka-sing gallery: Nobuyoshi Araki, advertisement in Photography in New York (2000). Edition K&H Archive
https://oceanpounds.com/products/lee-ka-sing-gallery-nobuyoshi-araki
Lee Ka-sing gallery: Xing Danwen, advertisement in Photography in New York (2002). Edition K&H Archive
https://oceanpounds.com/products/lee-ka-sing-gallery-xing-danwen

A hand-crafted wooden sculpture of “L E E” by Ka-sing, for the logo of Lee Ka-sing gallery (2000). Edition K&H Archive
https://oceanpounds.com/products/logo-of-lee-ka-sing-gallery-2000