Sometimes, people stumble into new lives by accident, visiting a city once and then staying for good. Or they might come across a weird old object and find themselves deep into an obsession. Such everyday randomness fascinates the Hong Kong artist Wong Ping.
Better known for his animations in psychedelic hues, with sardonic voiceovers and lewd storylines — like Who’s the Daddy, a 2017 video that broaches repressed sexuality, online dating, and political limitations with dark humour — Wong has also been moonlighting as the shopkeeper of Bok Bok Bok. Not exactly an artistic experiment, nor a serious business, this trove of retro curiosities and vernacular design is another chance encounter with the haphazard serendipity of life. And like all good detours, it’s coming to an end.
One Friday afternoon, in the bijou enclave of Tai Ping Shan, Wong made an exception and opened up on a weekday for this interview. Amidst the eclectic mix of vintage lamps, designer chairs, Soviet toys, and signage from cha chan teng past their last order, he talked at length about his two-year adventure sitting most weekends at the store.
A shop without a script
Covid played a role in this, in a roundabout way. Previously, Wong had been living out of a suitcase, roving between film festivals and exhibitions around the world. When in Hong Kong, he would stay in AirBnbs, just to see the city differently. Travel restrictions made him settle into an artist studio in Fo Tan, but boredom set in and he soon yearned for more everyday excitement.
Looking around, he found a retail space on Hong Kong Island. Inspired by the filmmaker Roy Andersson’s studio, he opened up shop, on a whim and without much of a plan, just to see what might happen. “If I bring in some income from the store, I could cover a bit of the rent,” he thought at the time. “Of course,” he says now, “that didn’t happen at all.”
The best part about running a shop was the strangers wandering in off the street. Stylists, tourists, neighbourhood regulars, and even the occasional dominatrix. “There’s a sense of excitement at the beginning of each day,” he says. “You never know who’s going to pop by.”
Forget Instagram’s curation of life: Wong found magic in the unpredictability of real encounters. “It’s like the world is feeding me people to meet,” he said. It was certainly an improvement from sitting alone in his Fo Tan studio – and quite unlike art openings where encounters are more purposeful, even orchestrated.
Some days, the shop was full of unexpected characters. Other days, barely anyone came in. As weekends blurred over time into a quiet routine, keeping the doors open became more of a duty than a pleasure. “I would get tired of sitting here on weekends,” he admits. “I mean, last year, I’d fly out Sunday night to go on a trip and come back Friday just to open up on the next day. Actually, some people think the unusual bit is when I am open.”
Yet something else happened over this time: Wong found himself pulled into a world of oddball hoarders and collectors in Hong Kong who salvage bits of vernacular design.
The garbage hunters’ circle
It started right when Wong was setting up shop, with boxes stacked up high and an odd Red A stool on top. One man kept peering in, and the third time around, he couldn’t help but walk right in and said, “This stool used to be mine. Would you sell it back to me?” Wong refused out of hand.
The man was a passionate collector of plastic items by Red A, a Hong Kong company that made the iconic red lampshades in wet markets as well as humdrum water buckets, faux chandeliers, and workaday stools. Apparently, these collectors had their own habit of bartering, exchanging one item for another, just to scratch their itch. The two-coloured stool wound up in a store where Wong picked it up for a song.
The man kept returning, polite but persistent. He would ring Wong up every now and then to see if he was in the “mood for a deal.” Wong wasn’t, but he did lend the stool out for an exhibition of Red A objects, and even got to visit the collector’s personal trove of Red A objects.
These collectors and hoarders became friends of sorts, who in turn shared their tips and tricks. Half sentimentalists, half opportunists, they would chat up and needle aging shopkeepers to part with items from retro fridges to shop signage. Always with an eye out for the city’s overlooked relics, they scoured shuttering shops and even watched for the estates of the recently deceased, hoping to rescue something before it was lost forever. Junk removal crews got into the game, too, charging thousands for the right to sift through discarded items before they hit the landfill.
The appeal of old shops
Wong collected the motley items in Bok Bok Bok over time, on trips to Thailand, Japan, Europe and elsewhere. Whenever he finished setting up an exhibition, he would rummage around flea markets and vintage stores. He points out a lamp made for the Moscow Olympics, which led him to a supply of plastic Soviet toys, also at the store. In his explorations, he would also discover unusual tidbits, like a Paul McCobb Origami Chair, which he learnt featured on the original Star Trek, or a wooden lidded box, a Japanese bonbonnière, which he spotted on the recent Japanese TV series Like Asura (Asura no Gotoku). He has posted some of these discoveries on Bok Bok Bok’s Instagram.
Wong’s impulse to share his love for retro design was, in fact, his main motivation for opening Bok Bok Bok in the first place. There weren’t enough stores like this in Hong Kong, he felt. “It’s not like you would fly over to Thailand and Japan and say, ‘Hey, wait, let’s go online on Carousell to see what’s on sale?’” he exclaims.
Wong railed against a certain minimalist Japanese aesthetic that had taken hold in Hong Kong. “It gets boring after a while, no?” he says. “Plus flats are so small in Hong Kong. You have this minimalist look but then you are left with so much stuff in a small space! […] It’s basically consumed as a ‘fast-food’ sort of aesthetic these days.”
At Bok Bok Bok, the artist became fascinated by how familiar objects shift meanings in different contexts. “Move a cha chaan teng sign out of its original spot,” he observes, “and you notice it in a new way.” Stripped of their function, these everyday relics take on a distinct presence, inviting appreciation of their aesthetic and historical value.
Yet the store was never an art project for Wong. With animation as his primary medium in art, he finds it difficult to link what he does in video art with material objects (though he has certainly been exploring ways to bridge the gap in recent exhibitions). He cannot envision the store as an artwork, in the way how Rirkrit Tiravanija replicated a Hong Kong umbrella repair shop recently at David Zwirner, or how Christoph Büchel’s Monte di Pietà served up a sprawling, chaotic multi-floored installation of film-set-like spaces stuffed with pawnshop curios, actual junk, and real art all mixed in – an exhibition that left Wong awestruck and exhilarated.
Closing time
Wong’s two years at Bok Bok Bok have been a profoundly rewarding journey. “I mean, in an ideal world, if I could keep going, without making such a loss, I would continue,” he reflects. “But no business!”
As the shop winds down, the artist is preparing to sell what he can. Some objects might find new homes, and the rest will return to storage. Whether Bok Bok Bok reappears in another form — or whether Wong himself will stumble into another unexpected detour — remains an open question. After all, in his world and ours, the best things happen by accident.
Bok Bok Bok is located at 28 Po Hing Fung, Sheung Wan. Contact the shop through Instagram for opening hours.