Hong Kong Art - it’s all from the mainland

October 15, 2007

Although I have now returned to the great state of North Carolina, I thought it important to throw in a coupla more blog summations of trip. We had a great time going to galleries in Hong Kong and saw some beautiful work from a variety of contemporary Chinese artists. The shocking thing to me was that basically all of the art we saw was from mainland china, and when we asked gallery owners about it, we repeatedly heard that the artistic momentum and inspiration is, indeed, all coming from the mainland. I guess Hong Kong is too busy being the financial center (?). We saw Mao represented everywhere, with his particular representation handled with respect and care in almost all cases. There is irony and wit threading through a lot of what we saw, but political rebellion was handled with subtlety and humor if at all.

So here are some of the galleries and artists that were particularly inspiring:

Wellington Gallery on Wyndham St
Tiny little gallery that only fit about 10 pieces, but all of them worth seeing. The gallery owner was incredibly friendly and told us a lot about the artists, and also showed us catalogs of other works by those artists. Two of our very favorite artists of the whole tour we saw at this gallery:
Liu Chun Hai, born 1966 in Harbin China, has a visually arresting contemporary style chock full of political commentary, or maybe he just likes a girl in uniform. Anyway, these 2 paintings we saw in the window are what made us go inside.

Also at the Wellington Gallery, was Liu Baomin. He is also from mainland China, born in 1968. I cannot find a website for him, and he is not listed on Wellington’s website, but I did find another Hong Kong gallery that shows much of his work online: Gallery on Old Bailey. I like the work we saw at Wellington better than the series represented on this site. The work we saw is quite large - maybe 60″ wide - and has a technique which looks like you are looking through a rainy window to the image. The colors are vivid, the greens are super juicy. It was hanging in the window which is the pic I snapped. Keep in mind that my pic has a lot of reflections which are not in the actual artwork, but all of the drippiness IS in the artwork.

The next gallery we went to was the Connoisser Art Gallery, 1 Hollywood Road. The artist that drew us into this gallery was Zhang da Zhong, an artist from Guangzhou, born in 1953. The pieces were portraits of young women in Red Guard uniforms (hmmmm, a recurring theme…). His technique has a classical art quality to it, but his subject matter conflicts with that style for a truly contemporary result.

Plum Blossoms Gallery, 1 Hollywood Rd, was a fun find, as they had a group show of contemporary artists showing at the time we were there. Jiang Shuo is a chinese female sculptor, turning red guards into cute little cartoons. Her art has been exhibited around the world and she now lives in Austria.

My favorite art at this gallery was by the Luo Brothers, 3 brothers out of Beijing. Their art is the embodiment of kitsch, and I love me some Chinese kitsch! Little fat babies are in every piece, and there’s usually at least one major logo of today mixed in. It’s all shiny happy colors and there’s often a shinier happier lacquer encasing the whole thing. I love it.

The Joyce Gallery was another that was a pleasure to visit. Apparently, their contemporary gallery opened a few days before we got there, so there is nothing on the web as of yet. They also have an antiques gallery, which is impressive. That webiste may be expanded to include the contemporary gallery, so I will link it here. Anyway, the folks we talked to were extremely knowledgeable about the artists and very willing to show us the work and tell us about it. The artist that immediately caught my eye upon walking in was Xiong Yu, and that was probably because the artwork had giant eyes. Found some pix at Artnet. Check it out to see more from this artist.

We had to venture into the Opera Gallery, which is aptly named as it lives up to it’s scary intimidating place for the most serious of art benefactors. But I couldn’t pass it up, because they had a Warhol exhibit. They had oodles of the Warhol Mao screenprints. After seeing Mao all over the place, I had to go back to the pop art version I was familiar with. They had much more high-end art worthy of a free look, like Xingtao Jiao’s Mao bust, which is a sculpture that looks like a Mao bust wrapped in kraft paper. What’s amazing is that this wrapped blob was totally recognizable as Mao! Anyway, the only pics I can find is on the Opera Gallery site. Rather than me putting them here, I think you should go there to check it out. Just look through the Asian Art section.

The last place I want to mention is the Baoqu Tang Gallery at the InterContinental Hong Kong in Tsim Sha Tsui. We went to this gallery because a poster caught my eye (see the post above). After trekking over to see the Yan Fei exhibit, we got there and realized the exhibit was over. We did get to see one piece that was still there, as well as a catalog of lot of his work. His painting style is amazing. It is unfathomably detailed and realistic, with every hair and every pearl rendered flawlessly. The color scheme is a bit dark, with a grayish cast to it, and the people themselves (especially the girls) look a little odd, with eyes that are too big and necks too long. Add to that the fact that the girls are just staring out at you without any expression whatsoever, and the effect “it’s real but it can’t be real” is eery and magnetic all at the same time.

Another piece of art with a sense of uncomfortable realism is a piece called “Woman with Bag” by Ba Te. She is more human than art normally allows a human to be…

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Tags: , China, galleries, hong kong