Asia-Pacific Newsweek
As he carefully studied old news archives, painter Chow Chun Fai tried to figure out what it said about change in Hong Kong.
His exhibition, Interview Interview II, is the second part of a collaboration with former television journalist Sharon Cheung, who reported on her art space of the same name between 1995 and 2004, SC Gallery. It will be exhibited in March in Art Basel Hong Kong’s Insights Industry.
The exhibition revisited her coverage scene, from the White House lawn to the Harvard auditorium where Chinese leaders delivered speeches. It also includes the official moment, where Hong Kong was handed over to China by the UK. In recent years, the paintings have re-examined Hong Kong’s turbulent political shifts and found themselves increasingly trapped in the middle of tense American-China relations.
“Searching for history does not necessarily provide clear answers, but it provides people with the opportunity to reinterpret memory,” said Chris Wanfeng, curator of the exhibition. “Art can help us understand from a more personal perspective, rather than an institutional perspective.”
Zhang’s journalism career began in 1997, a British colony, Hong Kong. Over the next decade, she traveled the world and reported diplomatic news. Locally, she became a reputation as a Hong Kong journalist, and his tenacious questioning made former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin so annoyed that he scolded her for being “too simple, sometimes childish” in the long rant he caught in the air.
It was a different period. Since the enactment of the National Security Law in 2020, Hong Kong’s press freedom has declined sharply. Newspaper editors were sentenced to jail on rebellion charges. Local news media self-censored to survive.
The pressure on the art world has also increased. The film was censored during the screening. Pro-Beijing newspapers attacked artists, accusing them of using government funds to criticize the government. Independent bookstores were forced to close.
He admits that while Chow has no intention of making political art, it is difficult to avoid this topic, especially because it becomes more entrenched in everyday life.
“In Hong Kong, politics has become a part of life and I really want my work to be rooted in reality,” he said in an interview in the studio. “This is the only reason politics appears in my work.”
Throughout his career, Chow has been known for his immediateness. His series “Movie Painting” recreates the film with subtitle dialogue, which doubles the Acerbic social commentary. Some of his ancient paintings, including Hong Kong politicians, refer to the crackdown and protest scenes at the Tiananmen Square in Beijing, which may not be exhibited in the city today.
The increasingly depressed atmosphere in Hong Kong has prompted his work to become more subtle. He said many artists chose to leave the city. To continue creating meaningful work without being overwhelmed by political pressure, he decided to take a new approach.
“On the one hand, I’m in touch with what’s going on in the world and Hong Kong, but I can also zoom in and watch and do my work from a distance,” he said. “It’s very immersive, but also a step back – this transformation has helped me a lot. Leaving art and everything else, even as a human being, I realize that this is the reason I can’t survive until today.”
The new exhibition is part of Chow’s efforts to respond to the growing limitations of creative expression, a process in which he compares learning the language of the new art.
As he began working with Zhang, Joe collected photos and souvenirs on the road, spent hours expanding the old movies and re-watching her coverage and editing of other press conferences. In addition to reviewing history and environment, he said he also tried to analyze the aesthetics of low-resolution lenses, including outdated color grading.
“I found some colors I’ve never seen before: new compositions, lines, scales,” he said. “It’s because I’m trying to make a new painting with old materials. It’s part of a new language I’m learning to figure out what I can say in this new era.”
In earlier works, he tried to stay true to his film referenced works and colors, but in the new exhibition, he gave himself more freedom to reinterpret. He highlighted a movie drama that attracted attention on the stage. He also cuts the face of the speaker, unlike the classic news framework of the news footage, allowing the audience’s eyes to exude other details such as the colorful pattern of the tie and the ghostly overexposure of the former Hong Kong leader as he rusts through the pages of speech ready.
Zhang said she once judged material only based on its news value, not its artistic potential. She said Chow thanked her for the details she was surprised, including the image she initially thought the frame was bad or the glowing was not good.
“At first, I wondered if old news would be boring, but in the hands of the artist, the works gained new life and new meanings,” she said.
The exhibition includes snapshots from different eras when Chinese leaders declared their love for the American people.
Chow uses a series of palm-sized drawings to depict the 2002 moment when an American journalist asked China’s then-Chinese leader what China has done for panda protection recently. “Sorry, I’m an electric power engineer,” Jiang quipped in English, then broke into Confucius’ famous quotes, explaining the wisdom of acknowledging knowledge he didn’t know, and then pointing out the expertise of Chinese protectionists.
In another, Chow won a midnight scene of the celebration captured in Tiananmen Square in July 2001 after winning a bid to host the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. (At the time, Zhang was accidentally separated from the photographer and had to ask the bystander to help her shoot her while she held the microphone. By the time she was able to send the image back to Hong Kong, it was 4:30 AM, that was 4:30 AM, Chow’s time delay, Chow made sure to include timestamps on the painting.)
The biggest part of the show is the 2.4 x 3.7-meter scene (7.9 feet by 12 feet), depicting the feast and ceremony that the British government handed over Hong Kong to China in 1997. In many spotlights, the Chinese flag and alliance Jack was hung on the center stage on the middle stage, and officials were hung among the officials, both among the officials and among the officials, which was the applause of the officials and received by the officials.
The so-called handover ceremony was held at the Hong Kong General Assembly and Exhibition Centre, where artworks will be held. In this different situation, letting this scene return nearly thirty years later is of great significance to Chow.
“When I painted this scene, I didn’t tell the moment in 1997, but everything means,” he said. “Time is the final judge of work.”
