Stephen Wong: The painter who builds up Hong Kong’s landscapes ‘like Lego’

Stephen Wong overtly describes himself as “grasping.” The panorama painter is referring to his urge for food for absorbing as a lot surroundings as attainable throughout lengthy and generally arduous hikes, which see him filling sketchbooks with impressions earlier than translating them into luxurious work.

Hong Kong, the 35-year-old’s house, serves as a relentless muse. Its distinctive topography — a mixture of mountains, seashores, islands and vertiginous cityscapes, all in shut proximity to at least one one other — encourage fantastical interpretations of what he encounters alongside the best way. He has created a whole bunch of those putting works over the previous decade, changing into one in every of metropolis’s most celebrated and picked up modern artists.

The pandemic period has ushered in a brand new interval of creativity for Wong. Unable to journey final yr, he as an alternative produced “A Grand Tour in Google Earth” — large-scale work depicting locations like Peru’s Machu Picchu and Japan’s Mount Fuji, the latter unfold throughout 5 canvases. With out leaving his studio, he used satellite tv for pc photographs from Google Earth and pictures combed from the web, in addition to his personal reminiscences of locations he had beforehand visited.

Now, in his subsequent bold endeavor, Wong has returned his consideration to Hong Kong, getting down to seize the 100-kilometer (62-mile) MacLehose Path. Famed for its sweeping views of the territory’s dramatic countryside, the stroll is damaged up into 10 levels, ranging in problem and ascent. Operating east to west by Hong Kong’s New Territories, it traverses iconic pure landmarks such because the monolithic Lion Rock and the Tai Lam Chung reservoir, higher often known as “Thousand Islands Lake.”

Whereas the MacLehose undertaking is one Wong had lengthy thought-about embarking on, Hong Kong’s speedy tempo of growth drove him to “seize the possibility” and eventually begin work in September final yr.

“I actually have the sensation that every part is altering,” he says. “I am unable to ensure that every part might be right here tomorrow.”

Bonhams’ Head of Fashionable and Modern Artwork Asia Marcello Kwan, who curated the exhibition, describes Wong’s creative language as surreal and really simple to grasp. However the painter’s incorporation of first-person reminiscences additionally makes his type very private, added Kwan, who thinks a latest flurry of exercise in Wong’s profession — displaying on the Artwork Basel artwork truthful and distinguished native galleries within the final 18 months, all whereas zealously portray — comes by in his newer works.

“His colour tone has modified fully in comparison with (his) early years, from extra earthy to extraordinarily colourful,” Kwan stated in a cellphone interview — a shift he thinks “is a conclusion of his creative achievement of the previous 10 years.”

Path impressions

Mountain climbing with Wong offers perception into his meditative course of. From time to time he stops for five to 10 minutes to rapidly draw no matter catches his eye, a way he prefers to taking pictures.

“These days, particularly with expertise, we’ve got so some ways of very precisely capturing surroundings, by taking pictures on iPhones,” he says. “Nevertheless it’s too quick for me.

“I prefer to memorize it by hand. Regardless that it isn’t that correct, it actually helps me perceive the surroundings extra deeply.”

On the Shing Mun Reservoir, the beginning of the MacLehose Path’s seventh stage, he fervently sketches Hong Kong’s highest peak, the three,140-foot Tai Mo Shan, towards the skinny, wispy clouds. “I at all times like to precise the connection between the panorama and the sky,” he remarks, mentioning the distinction between the onerous mountains and gentle clouds.

Later within the hike he pauses to sketch tall, verdant timber that at the beginning appear unremarkable, given their ubiquity alongside the path. However Wong is drawn to how this explicit cluster divides the surroundings in two — mountains to its left and the artifical reservoir and high-rises to the precise. “I actually like (these) sorts of conversations,” he provides.

Sergio Koo, a pal and collector of Wong’s work, joined him for about half of the MacLehose’s 10 levels. For Koo, mountain climbing with the painter offers him the chance to find components of the panorama that he, as an avid runner, sometimes speeds previous.

“It is attention-grabbing to see how he places (sure) experiences within the portray,” Koo says over the cellphone, selecting out sights they’d encountered that made their method into Wong’s work: a lone tree and the jagged define of catchwater that the pair, together with one other pal, had walked alongside.

Usually, Koo runs previous the concrete channel, which marks the final stretch of the 100-kilometer (62-mile) path, as rapidly as attainable.

“Now, even essentially the most boring a part of the path turns into attention-grabbing.”

Constructing landscapes

Again in his studio, Wong recomposes components of the path utilizing his sketches and reminiscences from the hike. He makes use of his creativeness to fill in the remainder.

Shiny, vibrant greens and contrasting colours depict every part from undulating mountain ranges to evocative pink timber with midnight-blue tops. His portray of the Sai Kung peninsula, seen from the MacLehose’s fourth stage, envisions clouds as cotton sweet mounds erupting towards a mint inexperienced sky, offsetting a sundown that spills into the repetitious peach-colored brushstrokes of the lapping ocean.

In addition to incorporating dreamlike hues, Wong generally modifications the orientation of key landmarks (just like the reservoir in stage seven that seems to the east of Needle Hill, as an alternative of the west), including to the sensation of the imaginary rooted in actuality.

“I am taken with how I interpret nature, fairly than the accuracy of capturing the surroundings,” Wong explains. “For me it is similar to taking part in Lego. You construct the panorama by compositions, traces and colours.”

Whereas his canvases are remarkably immersive, the inclusion of miniature folks — they’re depicted mountain climbing, doing outside actions, like parachuting, and even portray — play “an necessary function,” says Kwan, the curator.

“If you get nearer, you see tiny, tiny individuals are really contained in the work,” he provides. “That is essentially the most stunning half, for me.

“After all, the panorama is fantastic. However in the long run, I feel it is about people. So though the individuals are so tiny, each particular person within the image counts as a vital factor. It is about their journey. Stephen is different folks, but in addition at himself as one of many individuals on this journey.”

Watch the video above to see Stephen Wong at work.