How a Hong Kong psychiatrist with a taste for NSFW art built a gallery for the ‘unsuitable’
Dr Brian Ip set up Kabinett in Wong Chuk Hang to show inspiring works by female and LGBTQ artists – works he can’t hang in his office
Dr Brian Ip Pak-in’s Kabinett art space taps into the look and feel of a Scandinavian cabin, complete with pine panels and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking green hills. It acts as a fast-acting dose of Nordic tranquillity.
But the practising psychiatrist did not design it with wellness retreats in mind, and neither is this an art therapy centre. Instead, Kabinett is where he can freely show pieces that he deems not safe for work, or, at least, not safe for his work.
“I have to be very careful with what I show in the clinic and avoid anything that’s potentially triggering. The art on the clinic walls tends to be abstract,” he says of his practice in Melbourne Plaza, in Hong Kong’s Central neighbourhood, where his father, also a psychiatrist, has his office, too. “I love Miriam Cahn, but her portraits would be most unsuitable there.”
Ip, who believes collectors have the responsibility to share works rather than hide them away in storerooms, also intends Kabinett to be a semi-public platform for thematic exhibitions based on the psychologically complex creations he loves.