Hong Kong Artist Dialogue Series: Yau Wing-fung To and Fro and Mirage Harmony: Art Installations

Taking inspiration from the late Ming and early Qing painter Huang Xiangjian’s reunion journeys in Xubaizhai, Chih Lo Lou and Bei Shan Tang, together known as the three preeminent collections, Hong Kong artist Yau Wing-fung creates two sets of installation titled To and Fro and Mirage Harmony. To and Fro is a set of circular landscape cyclical installation that extends the spatial imagination of Huang’s original landscapes through segmented blue-and-green and outlined landscapes. As for Mirage Harmony, the distinctive landforms of the Hong Kong’s 18 administrative districts are each metaphorically reconstructed into a pictorial landscape that superimposes the contemporary cityscape. The artworks are on display alongside “The Pride of Hong Kong: Three Preeminent Collections of Ancient Paintings and Calligraphies” exhibition.

"To and Fro"
This is a cyclical installation that extends the spatial confines of landscapes captured in Huang Xiangjian’s reunion journeys in the three preeminent collections through the use of segmented blue-and-green and outlined landscapes. Huang’s original landscapes are independently framed inside geometric planes of different sizes and then extended in an outline style beyond the frames. Like woodblock prints from ancient China, mountains, rocks and clouds are shaped and formed in crisp lines. With the coloured scenes igniting imagination for the outlined parts, viewers are guided from the visual to the imagined scenes to make possible their own imagined time and space.

Unlike the lineal narrative of the traditional handscroll, the cyclical structure eliminates the beginning and the end of the work, inviting viewers to decide for themselves where to begin viewing. Progressing cyclically from the new moon to the full and from the full to the new, the moon projected onto the centre metaphorises the incompleteness of separation and the completeness of reunion in relation to the journeys. While experiencing the shifting landscape and the shifting moon, viewers are drawn into and become part of the revolving time and space as they shift their body or eyes accordingly.

To be cyclical is not to be monotonously repetitive, but rather to move to and fro to transcend both time and space.

"Mirage Harmony"
Hong Kong is in essence a mosaic of hills and islands. In this work, the distinctive landforms of the city’s 18 administrative districts are each metaphorically reconstructed into a pictorial landscape for installation in a dedicated space. Taking reference from the varied perspectives and stylised rocks and mountains in the reunion paintings made by the late Ming and early Qing painter Huang Xiangjian in the three preeminent collections, namely Xubaizhai, Chih Lo Lou and Bei Shan Tang, the installation juxtaposes disparate spatial-temporal scenes at varying distances and links them together with the use of colours and lines to form a landscape handscroll that is “continuous” in terms of time and space.

Independently formed and mounted on top of coloured plexiglass pillars, the landscapes for the districts are different in size to correlate proportionately with their respective area. Formed by blocks of coloured plexiglass stacked one on top of the other, the pillars are different in height to correlate proportionately with their respective population density to resemble a cluster of buildings that are variant in height. When set against the skyline of the Victoria Harbour, the reflective architectural construction superimposes the contemporary cityscape on the tranquil hilly islands across time and space.