PRINTCatalogue Note:
Ng Lung Wai, graduated from The Chinese University of Hong Kong with a master degree in architecture, has completed several art projects cooperating with museums and institutions including Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong Heritage Museum, Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defense, and Hong Kong Planning and Infrastructure Exhibition Gallery. Ng Lung Wai created images of Elizabeth the II, Mao Zedong, John Lennon and many other legendary figures with unconventional materials, including pyrography, stamps, Chinese ink bottles, Chinese chess, Western chess …… and more. Whereas “Pointillism” can refer to large-scale portraiture marked by the meticulousness of its composition, today a sort of “contextual pointillism” can be seen in the current inner-generational confusion over cultural identity that prevails amongst Hong Kongers.
The concept of pointillism originally relates to late-19th-century Neoimpressionist Georges Seurat, an artist who filled canvases with dots, daubing just the brush tip in the paint. Traditionally, painting was a pursuit of technical proficiency. Becoming famous was a matter of who could paint lifelike portraits in which the brushstrokes were imperceptible to the viewer. This changed, however, when the Impressionists used clear brushstrokes as a means to express radiant variations in light and shadow. Such scenes became a favorite of people around the world and ultimately changed people's persistence on “invis ible brushwork.” Neo- impressionists extended this brushwork concept but shifted it to a mechanical one with paintings made up of points. Contextual pointillism, then, is a conceptual progression in which all the points are composed of symbolically significant things. Using both Western and Chinese chess, bottles of sumi ink, and the tips of paint brushes, Ng Lung Wai explores the conflicts and compromises between of Chinese and Western cultures, and how they seem to integrate with each other along the contradictory dividing lines of social identity.
Ng Lung Wai has received awards like Incheon “Green Life” in South Korea, Italy Alessi “Aperitivo in 2009. Seoul Design Olympic in 2010, and Hong Kong Technology “Park Gift” architectural design in 2013.
The concept of pointillism originally relates to late-19th-century Neoimpressionist Georges Seurat, an artist who filled canvases with dots, daubing just the brush tip in the paint. Traditionally, painting was a pursuit of technical proficiency. Becoming famous was a matter of who could paint lifelike portraits in which the brushstrokes were imperceptible to the viewer. This changed, however, when the Impressionists used clear brushstrokes as a means to express radiant variations in light and shadow. Such scenes became a favorite of people around the world and ultimately changed people's persistence on “invis ible brushwork.” Neo- impressionists extended this brushwork concept but shifted it to a mechanical one with paintings made up of points. Contextual pointillism, then, is a conceptual progression in which all the points are composed of symbolically significant things. Using both Western and Chinese chess, bottles of sumi ink, and the tips of paint brushes, Ng Lung Wai explores the conflicts and compromises between of Chinese and Western cultures, and how they seem to integrate with each other along the contradictory dividing lines of social identity.
Ng Lung Wai has received awards like Incheon “Green Life” in South Korea, Italy Alessi “Aperitivo in 2009. Seoul Design Olympic in 2010, and Hong Kong Technology “Park Gift” architectural design in 2013.