All posts filed under: Studio

Wallace Chan 陳世英

In 2026, as he turns 70, the Hong Kong-based artist Wallace Chan presents Vessels of Other Worlds, a dual-site exhibition unfolding between Venice and Shanghai. The show opens at the Chapel of Santa Maria della Pietà during the 61st Venice Biennale in May and at the Long Museum in Shanghai’s West Bund in July. Venice drifts on water, dense with memory, while Shanghai flourishes from river and sea, charged with contemporary velocity. Between them, the new works shift in scale, in atmosphere, in the very texture of looking. The exhibition revolves around three monumental sculptures – Birth, Growth and Death. Working in titanium – unyielding yet unexpectedly lightweight, industrial yet capable of catching and bending light – Chan situates the pieces somewhere between sculpture, architecture and instrument. Each is several metres tall and composed of thousands of components, within which smaller, almost cellular elements suggest hidden systems at work. For Chan, material is not inert but has an existence with its internal logic. Titanium resists, reflects, recalibrates. Making, in this context, becomes a prolonged negotiation, an …

Chan Kwan Lok 陳鈞樂

Published by Caroline Ha Thuc

Weaving together Chinese traditional techniques, Japanese iconography and contemporary critical perspectives, the practice of Hong Kong artist Chan Kwan Lok draws on his daily experiences and observation of nature. His works depict human beings – and often himself – grappling with their environment, set against grand landscapes that both subsume and permeate them, while confronting their own emotions. The delicate ink lines facilitate the intertwining of worlds and perceptions, where elements overflow and merge. The sea, along with the forest and the mountain, provides the artist with particularly inspiring settings. CHT: Coral Reef (2013) and The Odyssey in Waves (2014) are among your first long handscrolls. Both depict the ocean. Later, one of your solo exhibitions was titled Threading Ocean. Where does this interest for the sea come from? Chan Kwan Lok: The first long scroll painting about the ocean can be traced back to my childhood work The Ocean (1999). I created it while having dim sum with my family, using pages torn from my school dictation book, drawing one page at a time …

Chak Chung 翟宗浩

Published by Caroline Ha Thuc

A graduate of the Department of Fine Arts at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in the early 1980s, Chak Chung was deeply influenced by the renowned artist Liu Kuo-sung. Over the past four decades, he has engaged in an extensive exploration of diverse painting traditions, from Chinese landscape to modernism. Shortly after completing his undergraduate studies, Chak relocated to Tokyo to further his artistic education, subsequently moving to New York, where he resided and worked until 2009. Upon returning to Hong Kong, he established his studio in Fotan, where he continues to investigate the possibilities of painting as a medium, striving to grasp the elusive beauty and inherent chaos of the natural elements and the human condition. Caroline Ha Thuc: Most of your artworks are landscape paintings and portraits of Hong Kong. They express the pull and push between elements and are generally free from people. Chak Chung: Socialising is one of my major weaknesses. I find people’s behaviours intimidating, and interacting with strangers drains my energy. Maybe that is why I am drawn to …

Whiskey Chow

Published by Jessica Wan

London-based artist, activist and Chinese drag king Whiskey Chow’s practice defies conventional boundaries, spanning performance, moving image, digital art, sculpture and experimental print to challenge established narratives around gender, masculinity and Asian identity. Through their multifaceted approach as an artivist – an artist with the heart of an activist – Chow creates work that interrogates systemic inequalities while carving out spaces for marginalised voices, particularly within the Chinese and other Asian diaspora communities and beyond. Drawing from their early experiences in feminist and LGBTQ activism in China, including organising groundbreaking events like For Vaginas’ Sake (將陰道獨白到底, 2013) and the first Chinese LGBTQ music festival, Lover Comrades Concert (愛人同志音樂會), Chow’s work offers a distinctive non-western perspective within western contexts. Their work you must everywhere wander (你必顧盼, 2021) in the exhibition On Queer Ground at Yorkshire Sculpture Park and performances at renowned institutions like the Tate Modern and V&A demonstrate the growing recognition of their unique artistic vision. Jessica Wan: Your journey from organising feminist and LGBTQ events in China to your current artistic practice in London …

Michele Chu 朱凱婷

Published by Caroline Ha Thuc

Multidisciplinary artist Michele Chu explores how human bodies interact and express our deep and often hidden emotions. Through performances and interactive installations, her practice engages with the tensions and societal norms that govern the public space and our cultural customs. Delicate and subtle, her work also involves sharing parts of her own intimacy and personal memory as an invitation for viewers to journey inward and question the threads that bind us to one another and the world we inhabit. Caroline Ha Thuc: Your practice revolves around the ideas of intimacy and personal emotion. What triggered this interest? Michele Chu: My interest in intimacy dates to my graduate school, where I became aware of how many of my friends were struggling with loneliness. The juxtaposition of connection [through friendship] and isolation prompted me to question the nature of intimacy and what fosters closeness between people. Because intimacy is so inherently human-centred, in conjunction with doing academic research, I also conducted fieldwork through street interventions with strangers. These insights directly informed the design of one of my …

Wu Jiaru 吳佳儒

Published by Brady Ng

It’s no simple task to pin down Wu Jiaru’s practice. Blending mythical themes with personal experiences, contemporary cogitations with historical perspectives, her paintings, sculptures and other artworks are the results of constant discovery. Her artistic creations have been shown in New York, London and across Asia. On the occasion of her most recent exhibition, A Brief Digression, presented at HART Haus, Wu sat down with Artomity for a conversation about the way she makes art, the flow of people and goods, and the way information is lost and recovered through multiple stages of translation. Brady Ng: We’re visiting your studio. Tell me about it. Wu Jiaru: It’s like a storage unit! My studio is in HART Haus, which is basically a coworking space for artists. When I need to make larger pieces, I use the public spaces that are more open. My own studio space is mainly for storing artworks. I’ve been renting space here since I graduated from City University of Hong Kong in 2017. BN: Jeffrey Shaw, who is one of the pioneers …

Kurt Chan 陳育強

Published by Caroline Ha Thuc

Kurt Chan received formal training in traditional Chinese art in the late 1970s and later studied contemporary art in the US in the mid-80s. For almost 25 years, he focused on mixed media sculpture, aiming to bridge the influences of both traditions. Recently, though, he decided to go back to ink painting and calligraphy, questioning the very essence of painting and landscapes as representations of reality and nature. His new experiments reflect his desire to continue challenging the artistic means of expression and, at the same time, respond to the current global political and ecological crisis. Caroline Ha Thuc: It has been five years now since you retired from The Chinese University of Hong Kong to focus exclusively on your art practice. What are your takeaways from your long teaching experience? Kurt Chan: I taught at The Chinese University for 27 years, focusing on mixed media, art history and theory. I have witnessed a significant change in how art is taught. In the 1980s, there were only a few art students at The Chinese University, and they were still learning …

Szelit Cheung 張施烈

Published by Caroline Ha Thuc

Szelit Cheung’s paintings offer viewers open spaces in which to wander, escape or retreat. Neither abstract nor realistic, they feature imaginative architectural settings that are at the same time familiar and unknown. Fascinated by the concept of the void, the Hong Kong artist builds structural and poetic landscapes that attempt to embody the texture and complexity of emptiness expressed through a rich range of colours and contrasts. With no foreground or tangible objects to hold onto, the gaze plunges immediately into a geometrical world of light and shadows where time appears suspended. Light radiates and exceeds frames, including the canvas itself, while the void tends to echo the projection of our own selves. Caroline Ha Thuc: Do you remember why you originally wanted to be an artist? Szelit Cheung: I love the process of making art; it is as simple as that. The only thing I can remember from childhood was drawing with a pencil for hours until the sun went down. There was nothing that made me happier than painting and drawing. Then, in …

Leung Chi Wo 梁志和

Published by Caroline Ha Thuc

For decades, Leung Chi Wo has been exploring the history and historical sites of Hong Kong, mixing archival material with photographs, videos, texts and multimedia installations. While his research-based practice brings forth the contradictions and complexities of historiography, it also injects fantasies, intimacy and emotion into collective narratives. Time, and how to embody its multiple dimensions, is the artist’s main subject, reflected in the title of his new solo exhibition, Past-Future Tense, opening in May 2023 at Blindspot Gallery. Caroline Ha Thuc: You have recently been to London to look for archives dealing with British plans for the future of Hong Kong after World War Two. What drove you to do so? Leung Chi Wo: I don’t really know why, but I always feel dragged to stories which read unreal but are true, or vice versa. And historical subjects are mostly such: they always claim to be real. They’re sort of far away and so close at the same time. And supposedly, I am part of a colonial history which has been erased and rewritten, …

Daphné Mandel

Published by Caroline Ha Thuc

French urban designer Daphné Mandel used to work in public spaces before moving to Hong Kong, where she decided to reinvent herself as an artist. Since then, she has been observing, depicting and reimagining the landscape of the territory, questioning its identity and specificities. Increasingly, she has engaged deeper in fieldwork, exploring abandoned villages in the New Territories and collecting stories from local villagers whose lifestyle is on the brink of disappearing. Between fantasy and reality, her artworks invite viewers to project themselves into this collective heritage and to dive into the unalterable cycle of time. Daphné Mandel. Courtesy the artist. Caroline Ha Thuc: You worked as a landscape architect for a long time. What triggered your desire to become an artist? Daphné Mandel: I moved to Hong Kong in 2008. Seeing the city with my own eyes for the first time, I thought: “How am I going to find work as a landscape architect in such urban density? Where is the public space?”Knowing that I couldn’t practise landscape architecture in the same way that …