Distance between human and landscape

Stephen Wong Chun-hei(b.1986)

Stephen Wong Chun-hei was born in Hong Kong in 1986 and gained a BA in Fine Arts from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2008. Since graduating from university, Stephen has been focusing on painting landscapes, using various methods to profoundly explore the distance and relationship between man and nature. In just a few years, from following the brushstrokes of the 19th-century British landscape painter John Constable and the modern Yorkshire Dales landscape painter David Hockney to refining a unique style of painting, skillfully and freely wandering between Realism and Impressionism between mixed styles.

Since 2007, Stephen has held several solo exhibitions, including "From a Distance" (2011), "Step Back to Nature" (2014), "The Mountain Speaks" (2015), "Looking at the sky and the landscape beneath" (2018), "A Grand Tour in Google Earth” (2021), etc. His works have been exhibited all around the world such as Taipei, Macau, Jakarta, and are also collected by the Hong Kong Museum of Art and collectors. In the 2020 Fine Art Asia X Art Basel event, his works were sold out on day one.

Stephen is an extremely hardworking artist whose landscape painting style has undergone several transformations over a decade. This research selects some of his works created from 2009 to 2021, let us take a closer look at his transformation process.

Looking back to Stephen's university work, he re-created Marvel works and made a declaration with a slogan... there was no element of landscape drawings at all. After graduation, he embarked on a journey of landscape drawing creation and spent three years roaming the world of computer games, watching and sketching the landscapes in the games. This computer game sketch series ‘Virtual Game Landscape’ series was exhibited in the 2009 joint exhibitions "Hiking Arte"(Group Show) and "Dwelling"(Group Show), both of which were planned by independent curator Jeff Leung.

In the interview with the research team, Stephen explained that under the strong academic and intellectual atmosphere of the Fine Arts of CUHK, students' artistic creations tend to be conceptualized: focusing on theoretical foundations, supplemented by creative ideas. "No one was brave enough to do landscape painting during the university years, even if they liked it. Because when handing in homework, students needed to explain the work and the concept behind it." After graduation, Stephen decided to draw the landscape that he always wanted to draw. He added hastily that he is not criticizing the university's learning model. On the contrary, he has always been grateful that he had received conceptual art training. "I was greatly influenced by Professor Chan Yuk Keung when I was in university. Although I do not create many conceptual artworks now, because I know that I don’t like this approach. However at least I tried, and the impact of that experience continues to this day, even when I am creating now.”

Stephen said, at first he was still using a conceptual art thinking mode when he was creating, which led to the creation of the ‘Virtual Game Landscape’(2009) series. However, Stephen mentioned in his exhibition "From a distance" (2011) which held two years later that it was not what he wants: “ The“Virtual Game Landscape” series, all the images I painted came from video games, the composition or use of colors in the paintings tended to be passive and the works did not seem to be close to my heart.”[1]

In the process of confusion and exploration, Stephen has created works that seem to be very different from his own style, such as "Hasn't anyone said that your artworks are so alike Chow Chun Fai's movie paintings?" (2010). This drawing was exhibited in 2011 in Stephen’s solo exhibition “Someone Bending the Machine: An exhibition responding to the artworks of Chow Chun Fai”, which showed three playful and somewhat self-deprecating paintings for his Fo Tan studio opening.

Changes in life sometimes come unexpectedly and quietly. In 2011, Stephen took a bicycle to Ma On Shan Pier for the first time outdoor sketching in his life. Sitting quietly by the sea, holding painting tools and focusing on depicting the mountains on the other side, he did not even know that it was the famous Pat Sin Leng in Hong Kong. Unexpectedly, he fell in love with outdoor sketching because of that, and in the ten years since that day, he continues to travel all over Hong Kong to paint in the hills and countryside, establishing the creative direction he wanted.

In that year, he walked through the foggy Ha Pak Nai and greenery Shing Mun Reservoir, and he even traveled far to England in search of the Yorkshire scenery described by the UK landscape painter David Hockney. At that time, after outdoor sketching, he returned to the studio to take pictures of the paintings, then used the projector to project the photos, and lastly painted the finished artworks, creating a ‘pixelized’ illusion of landscape oil painting.

These landscape paintings, including ‘Trees in Yorkshire Dales1’, were exhibited in the 2014 solo exhibition "Back to Nature". The exhibition catalog revealed that the work wanted to explore the distance between man and nature, and between man and technology. Stephen confessed: "Technology can minimize the distance between humans and nature but at the same time, it creates aloofness between nature and us… While I felt the proximity to the places I visited which formed the subject matter of my paintings, I also felt distant I created when I used the pixelated way to paint my works."[1]

This exhibition was held in Galerie Ora-Ora, the founder of Galerie Ora-Ora Henrietta Tsui described the 28-year-old new artist as "the most organized young artist I have ever seen"[2], showing that she was so impressed by both ideas and well-prepared for Stephen. She even wrote an accurate and unique annotation for Stephen's artist characteristics in the exhibition catalog: "Stephen Wong is known for his maturity, clarity and concentration"[2].

In an interview with the research team, Stephen admitted that this pixelated landscape painting still cannot get rid of the inherent landscape painting style. When the researcher praised the swaying shadows, magnificent and poignant atmosphere of the painting "Trees in Yorkshire Dales1", and even had a bit of the feeling of Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki, Stephen smiled bitterly and said this style of painting is similar to traditional English landscape painting. "In my early sketching life, I had a very concrete premise for the landscape: everything had to be natural. So when sketching, I deliberately looked for some angles where I couldn't see any buildings at all, not even a broken house. "

Since then, Stephen slowly let go of this rigid framework, allowing himself to record more than one aspect of the landscape. "Now I want to see more of the transition between the suburbs and the city, which is actually the most interesting to me. No matter whether people from the city go to the suburbs, or the so-called suburbs, there are actually many mountains roads are created by people walking, or there are many artificial objects on the mountain, all these are not absolute nature. What I am more concerned about currently is how urban people will behave in a landscape, or interact with nature.”

In his works, the footprints of human beings gradually appear, little men, wandering among the paintings, and sometimes Stephen also appears in the paintings.

In his 2014 solo exhibition "Step Back to Nature"[3], Stephen gradually realized the landscape painting style he longed to pursue. Since 2013, he has spent a year climbing and sketching every weekend, recording the beautiful miracles performed by nature every day, from the cool breeze blowing over the top of Tai Tung Shan Mountain, to the rusting sound of moving Miscanthus, and the orange sunset slowly disappearing in the lower Ha Pak Nai’s horizon. He also carefully observes the interaction between human beings and nature, just like painting a leisurely time when mountain climbers are sometimes reading, sometimes exercising, and sometimes playing mobile games on the 21 stone houses in Tai Tung Shan Mountain. Stephen explained: "I am more curious that the missionaries built 21 huts on Tai Tung Shan Mountain because I think they would choose some places with more beautiful scenery for the retreat. So I am very curious about what is the scenery around the huts, so I wanted to make a series, drawing all the huts, a total of 21 pictures.”

Sometimes he painted with oil paints, sometimes acrylic and watercolor. He did not deliberately pursue absolute proportions, nor followed the "iron rules of painting". Instead, he displayed all the people and things that should be seen in one painting and achieved a unique style of painting that blends reality and vagueness.

Just as Stephen once wrote a short article in 2015, "Bring a small sketchbook to the street"[4]. He wrote that when he was a child, he went to the teahouse (Cantonese restaurant) with his parents, besides Dim Sum, his most anticipated thing was to be able to draw in the sketchbook, "Many people think that painting is to pay attention to skills first, but this is not true. For children, painting is an instinct, but growing up makes people gradually lose the intuition and instinct that children should have, and become "mature" and "logical", we regard it as progress. That's why Pablo Picasso once said that his artistic pursuit is to learn the purity of children's drawing and stepping back is actually very beneficial." Reminds the researcher of Stephen’s exhibition title "Step Back to Nature", it was intended to remind the viewers that in a constantly moving forward and sprinting urban life, we should never forget to turn back and return to nature, and sometimes we could often see a wider sky.

Stephen's landscape paintings are not entirely large canvas paintings, but also have many smaller daily sketches. For example, in 2015, the exhibition "Meeting the Mountains" held at Makee, a lifestyle grocery store in Foo Tak Building, Wanchai, exhibited 100 mountains painted by Stephen, one drawing a day, creating a story for each hill. Stephen wrote in the exhibition introduction[5] that the reason why he started the painting mountain series was because when he taught the painting class, he asked each student to design an original character, and then upload a small painting for this character on Instagram every day, like writing a diary. Based on encouragement, Stephen also participated in it himself. Unexpectedly, when he started painting, he couldn't stop imagining. Therefore, he opened an account "Mountain_everyday" on instagram to share these little mountains paintings.

In the palm-sized sketchbook, each mountain has its own shape and story. 005: pushing up the rock, people are like Sisyphus in Greek mythology, pushing the boulder up the mountain; 008:Island on the mountain, there is a small island on the top of the mountain. After completing 100 paintings, he continued to paint, 101: Dream of a mountain, he dreamed of a mountain; 123: Lost in the mountain, the mountain became a labyrinth... The fantasy in the painting is without boundaries, but the common feature is a sense of tranquility with gentle brushstrokes, which always reminds the researcher of Feng Zi Kai's cartoons.

In 2017, Stephen launched another project, painting the sky for 365 days, cloudy or sunny, bright and dark. Inspired by the Cloud Study series carried out by John Constable, an English landscape painter, from 1821 to 1822, John Constable painted clouds to study the possibility of light, shadow, and color in the sky. Stephen's 365 small paintings of the sky were framed and exhibited in the 2018 "Looking at the sky and the landscape beneath" exhibition.

At the same time, there are several large-scale mountain landscape paintings by Stephen, such as the nine-panel painting "The Dragon Back", which depicts the complex and undulating mountains of The Dragon Back with high-saturation and bright colors. Behind the lush tree, shadows are the blue sea and sky. Nine panels record his entire hiking journey, walking from the scorching sun till the sunset, starting with the road and ending with the road.

Another astonishing work is the diptych "Pat Sin Leng" (from the Spring Breeze Pavilion to the Lion Pavilion), which uses bright emerald green to paint the bright mountain colors, and uses the winding mountain path as the viewpoint to compress the eight major mountain peaks that stretch for several kilometers. In one painting, if you look closely, you can see the delicate depictions of passers-by, cars, street signs, and rest pavilions. The landscape is not entirely in proportion, but it is very realistic and three-dimensional, making the viewers marvel at the coexistence of reality and virtuality. This painting is collected by the Hong Kong Museum of Art.

And this unique high-saturated color landscape painting has also become Stephen's symbol. Stephen was selected by lifestyle magazine Tatler as "2021 Asia's Most Influential: The Cultural List"[7]. The introduction to the list describes Stephen: "Stephen Wong paints sumptuous, impressionistic depictions of the local landscape, which nonetheless provoke a sense of dislocation with their over-saturated hues and uncanny, VR-like textures."

In 2019, Hong Kong broke out “against The Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement”, the social atmosphere was tense, and demonstrators and the police were fighting on the streets. Stephen admitted in an interview[8] that he constantly questioned how he could continue to paint this kind of "so-called natural beauty, beautiful painting or attitude?" Therefore, he temporarily abandoned this kind of drawing mode, he chose to draw comics echoing the current situation on the iPad during the social movement, "making myself feel better, which was the case at the time."

Entering 2020, the COVID epidemic has caught the world by surprise. Hong Kong has also implemented various epidemic prevention and gathering restrictions, calling on citizens to stay at home and avoid going out. Therefore, Stephen launched three projects, which only need to sit at home to paint, including placing models or objects on different books/paintings/scenes to paint, forming the exhibition "Indoor Travelling with Objects" (2021); the exhibition "Nowhere to Go" (2021), which imagines a hundred isolated islands and depicts the state of loneliness under the epidemic “A Grand Tour in Google Earth” (2021).

After years of exploration, he seems to have returned to the starting point, painting in front of the computer screen, but the difference is that he has found his own painting direction and also has a group of bosom friends. He has traveled all over Hong Kong's big and small hills, and his favorite mountain is still the Pat Sin Leng that he saw when he first sketched. During the interview with the research team, he admired from the deep down in his heart: "The appearance of Pat Sin Leng is really special.” This year (2021), he painted another oil painting looking at Pat Sin Leng from afar, sitting on the shore of the same Ma On Shan pier in 2011. In the painting, Stephen was sitting in the lower-left corner of the beach and drawing, next to a group of students sitting in a circle playing ‘truth or dare’, "It was 2018 when there were still a group of students sitting next to me happily playing truth or dare. I drew this scene back to this year, because I recalled that it was a long time ago that I didn't need to wear a mask, It's so free to go around, and there are these happy students next to me. I remembered this scene, so I drew it."

Stephen Wong’s facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/paintingsbystephenwongchunhei