Hong Kong Feelings

Whether it’s a question of visiting a museum or a city, I’ve developed a certain personal strategy to find my own way. I rarely follow any set programme or agenda; I prefer to follow a thought based on my own sensitivity - my own curiosity - a thought that serves as a guide as I set out on an adventure.

I, of course, did not understand everything during the three months that I spent in Hong Kong for the French art festival “The French May”. It is not always possible to completely enter a foreign culture in what seems to be a long, and yet limited, period of time. Nonetheless, this second trip has essentially offered me the enormously delightful sensation of being able to believe, for a little while at least, that I am actually a native of Hong Kong.

I have loved roaming through this city sparkling with mischievousness, watching the various levels of society, much like the layers of my painting, thinking about the various ways that this has influenced my feelings, my body itself. I have loved this city, which has sometimes affected my nerves, forcing me to accept all around me as I watch, detached, going beyond the simple spectator to join the city itself, arriving at a perfect complicity, or something that resembles it, to finally abandon myself to a sort of generous, heady sensation that makes it possible to forget the tragic side of life.

I have lost myself in this city bustling with noise and various warm odors, which delights in marrying the cavernous sound of buses with the pulsing rhythm of its traffic lights. I have been surprised by its amazing architectural juxtapositions, the numerous obelisks pointing towards the stars, the idle perfection of the Hollywood Road park as it confronts the Man Mo temple, the icy perfection of the glass and concrete of Central, the mindboggling stack of apartments still marked with the years of Kowloon, the number of intense, colourful signs in Wanchai. I have loved strolling through this delightful mayhem as I lost myself in the crowds of Causeway bay and Mong Kok.

I have enjoyed this city of contrasts, energy and variety, which I have often compared to a living sculpture that always calls to mind the seventh art. I specifically think of the “Light Tower” of Nicolas Schöfferin 1953 and the “Colours of Sound N° 3" of Vardanega (1963-66): these two kinetics artists strived at freeing their work of its unchanging character. I have the same feeling about this city: function takes precedence over the buildings themselves. This city abounds in incoherence, although its incoherence is softened or at least diminished by its absolutely phenomenal capacity for adaptation.

I have attempted, in this book, to highlight moments of extreme coincidence between my work and fleeting impressions that I have had of this city. Often, a shape, a colour, a combination of images or some isolated picture or smell has touched me, like the sight of some friend seen on the street. In examining my work sometime later, I suddenly discover this shape, the impression that has haunted my subconscious. This series of paintings is a sort of travel diary; it is like a sponge that has soaked up the feelings I have experienced in this city. I have not just painted what I have seen, but also the sound of life in the streets, the odours drifting from restaurant windows, the smell of bodies perspiring.

It is not enough to simply observe in order to paint; the artist must exist in what he paints. I do not try to represent anything in particular, I seek simply to understand. And understanding is not simple because the truth often lies far beyond appearances. The artist must therefore work hard to understand, accept the risk of being wrong and even accept losing his way for a while. But he must, above all, learn to remain true to himself.

I refuse to put titles on this series known as the “Hong Kong feeling”, since it would mean agreeing to enclose the observer’s vision in the narrow box of a conventional process, reduced to the words in the title, a stigma it would be difficult to lose.

Art has always been a way of circumventing differences, of initiating a dialogue without any ulterior motive. It is clear that the French and Chinese cultures do not share the same philosophy: that is why it is so interesting to attempt to bring them together.