Exhibitions
Isaac Cordal: The miniature loneliness that pervades Hong Kong
Time marches on, and each urban space writes its own chapter. It was in this way that, near the Dabu Wenwu in Hong Kong, I came across one of Isaac Cordal's pieces: a figure whose gaze is directed towards the heights, seemingly engaging in dialogue with the constant verticality of the bustling, contrasting metropolis that surrounds it.
Street art has long since ceased to be merely paintings on walls and murals. Isaac Cordal is one of the contemporary Spanish artists recognized for his miniature sculptures that engage with the urban environment. His work is characterized by small figures, often barely 15 cm tall, installed on streets, ledges, walls, and urban corners. They depict men in suits and anonymous figures in routine, absurd, or hopeless poses, prompting reflections on alienation, bureaucracy, power, consumerism, and urban loneliness.
Amidst the throngs of people that throng the streets of Hong Kong, there is a project created by Isaac Cordal as part of Cement Eclipses . It is one of his projects where he uses the scale and placement of sculptures to create a tension between daily life and the city's architecture. These works, through their miniature scale, denounce institutional inaction in the face of problems such as climate change and social crisis, transforming the contemplation of the city into a critical act.
Isaac Cordal's works become miniature mirrors of our great contemporary dilemmas. The artist observes with fascination—and a certain melancholy—how financial centers like Hong Kong foster what he calls a "collective loneliness": a frenetic way of life that, even amidst the crowds and skyscrapers, leaves people isolated in their own dizzying pace.
Their diminutive, suited executives, figures seemingly escaped from the corporate grind, tell a story easily recognizable to city dwellers: the weight of relentless stress, the pressure of constant advancement, and a cost of living that threatens to sink everything. There they are, perched on ledges teetering on the edge of the abyss, trapped in invisible corners, or half-submerged in puddles that act as symbolic fissures. They are characters who fade into a society sinking not only under the weight of fragile economic systems but also in the face of an environmental crisis that grows like an unstoppable tide.
In each of his sculptures, Cordal captures the silent murmur of a world fracturing without daring to confront its own vulnerability. For this urban intervention, the Spanish artist scattered more than thirty figures throughout the Central and Western Districts, occupying corners of streets like Kau U Fong and Tai Ping Shan.
In the midst of Hong Kong's urban fabric—so dense, stratified, and full of folds—each spatial discovery became, according to him, more suggestive than the previous one, as if the city itself were claiming these small witnesses to its own dizzying rhythm.
To preserve the integrity of the miniatures, Cordal fixed them precisely above ground level, thus preventing them from disappearing into other people's hands and ensuring that they would continue to observe, from their discreet location, the life that runs without stopping.
