Enlightenment 1998 – 2018: A Retrospective of Contemporary Artist Fong Chung-Ray

Description

Works from the last two decades of Fong Ching-Ray’s life, including previously unexhibited pieces, are currently on show at Hong Kong’s longest-running gallery.

Fong was born in China’s Henan province into a family of accomplished scholars and artists. The Chinese civil war led him to joining the military, and later moving to Taiwan as a teenager. In the 1960s, he became a member of the Fifth Moon Group, a group of contemporary Chinese artists at the forefront of the modern art movement. Their avant-garde approach in marrying Modern Western techniques to traditional Chinese ink painting has ushered a new era for Chinese contemporary ink art.

Fong’s artistic career comprises a wide range of styles and mediums. Since the late 1980s, he has combined Chinese Calligraphy with abstract painting, converting Chinese characters into art through collage. Fong was also inspired by details produced by the process of the ‘decay’ and has created works featuring a multilayered mixture of materials, showing flaking paint, scratches, and torn paper layered over writing. His recent works are seemingly simple compositions of geometric shapes overlaid with
unrestrained Buddhist text, which alludes to the ephemerality of both his artworks and his self-enlightenment.