Kwok Mang Ho, Lee Wing Ki, Prof. Lee Yun Woon, Prof. Leong Lampo, Dr Leung Kwan Kiu, Tso Cheuk Yim, Yeung Yuk Kan / University Museum and Art Gallery (UMAG), The University of Hong Kong / Sep 23 – Dec 30, 2023 / Ilaria Maria Sala

As ink has become more popular, and more gallery and museum space is being dedicated to the medium, there can be a slight confusion as to what it exactly is – and isn’t. A small but very diverse show at the University Museum Art Gallery at Hong Kong University, Kings’ Inscriptions · Contemporary Interpretations, provides a suitably wide panorama of what ink can be – starting from one of its first uses: ink rubbings of engraved steles.

As the show’s title suggests, the inscriptions, especially the most ancient ones, often retell the stories of kings, expanding on their moral qualities. Travelling literati would stop and copy the engravings by covering them with ink and pasting rice paper sheets on the stones, which would then be “rubbed” by tapping a piece of bundled cloth onto the paper, in order to transfer a negative of the inscription. In the show, we can see how this operation resulted in a much more complex reworking and reimagining of the inscriptions, as some scholars would then cut up the rubbings and paste them into their inscription albums – as in one example, anonymous, which is kept in the Collection of Fung Ping Shan Library at the University of Hong Kong. Another example is the inscription album from a stele at Mount Longjiao, from Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang dynasty (618-907), pasted in a concertina album, from the collection of Lee Yun Woo.

In order to juxtapose this with contemporary artists, we can also see on show some more recent kings and their ink inscriptions: there is the King of Kowloon, aka Tsang Tsou-choi (1921-2007), who went around Hong Kong with brushes and paint or ink, writing graffiti with his own version of a stele, in which he affirmed his sovereign rights over the land of Kowloon. As with the ancient stelae, this was done by writing full genealogies, with calligraphed lists of names.

Another regal artist active in Hong Kong and represented in the show is Frog King, aka Kwok Mang-ho, with specially made installation Calligraphy and Printed Ink Rubbings Inscriptions for the Ultra-space Frog Utopia, composed of found objects, a painted mannequin, calligraphy in Chinese and English, collage and paint. The Frog King inserts himself in the royal tradition of being inscribed on stelae, stating that “I, known as the ‘Frog King’, employ textual elements to proclaim my ‘royal’ identity and aspire to achieve lasting recognition through my name”.

Other works abandon this direct dialogue with ancient stone inscriptions by playing with very different media. Yeung Yuk Kan has produced Eastern Echo Series for the show, a series of hand-built, hand-painted and monoprint porcelains, in which calligraphy, printmaking and ceramics merge into a single expression, representing collections of words gathered by the artist by asking friends and family for their favourites. Echoing the ancient stone inscriptions and their rubbings, the words were first engraved, then transferred to a porcelain slab through black porcelain slip, a very thin, runny paste made of water, porcelain and pigment. The printed slabs have then been rolled up, revisiting the classical Chinese scroll painting. 

Also highly thought-provoking is the piece by Lee Wing Ki, commissioned for this show, in which he plays with a 1955 list of the first Chinese characters to be simplified in mainland China. We see both the original book with the suggested list, and 15 small canvases on which the Chinese characters from the list are reproduced, superimposed on one another, faded out or darkened, in a new interpretation of the play between form and meaning that is intrinsic to calligraphy. It interrogates the viewer regarding what is simplified and what is full form, adding, subtracting and smearing out, and introducing a political layer of linguistic policies into calligraphic expression.

I Love You by Leung Kwan Kiu plays with the embedded submission to rulers that is a constant of stone inscriptions, with a playful three-canvas calligraphy in which the words I Love You are written first in Chinese, to represent Hong Kong’s pre-British times, then in English, for the colonial years, and again in Chinese, for the present, in black and white paint.

As the modern takes on stone inscriptions and ink reveal, the possibilities for playfulness and serious reflection are pretty much endless. Inscriptions, and their most classical medium of ink rubbings, always carry multiple levels of meaning through the materiality of the medium. To that, we must add the meaning of the words inscribed, the energy of the strokes in the writing and the further possibilities provided by the amount the artist chooses to intervene in readability versus the manipulation of the written characters and letters. In spite of its relatively small size, this show interrogates and amuses in equal parts, and represents a rewarding approach to the many possibilities of ink – and a creative springboard for those already close to the medium.

Featured image: Calligraphy and Printed Ink Rubbings Inscriptions for the Ultra-space Frog Utopia by Kwok Mang Ho. Courtesy the artist and UMAG.