CHOW CHUN FAI

Created specifically for this exhibition, Chow’s latest canvas paintings are based on his photography done over the last 20 years when wandering around the city streets of Hong Kong. From there, Chow echoed his paintings with how Hong Kong films would depict particular scenes at particular times, evoking a sense of nostalgia for the collective memory in a romantic urbanity of the past, breaking the framework of time and expressing the artist’s thoughts and feelings about these locations over the past several to tens of years.

This exhibition will also feature a large-scale six-panel work titled ‘Chicken and Duck Talk 1988 at Tai Po Man Mo Temple’. The unique aspect of the artist’s collage work is that each panel has an independent figure within it, which also reflects the artist’s persistence in the work. The 14 brand new works on display capture many disappearing locations, overlapping impressions that are familiar to Hong Kongers and even tourists, in order to evoke the audience’s resonance and collective memories of the city. Each work contains countless details, from the fading neon lights, window grilles, and scaffolding, to every brick and tile, all of which are worth savouring.

In one of Chow’s latest works 1988 City War at the Carpark of Star Ferry Pier, we see the two protagonists Chow Yun-fat and Tik Lung confronting each other on the top storey of the carpark at Star Ferry Pier. The Bank of China Tower, which was still under construction at the time, could be seen in the background. It is the significance these two structures – the Star Ferry Pier and the Bank of China Tower – possess that intrigues Chow, of which both are indispensable to Hong Kong’s collective memory.