Chui Pui Chee: Nine Abysses

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Touch Gallery is honoured to present Hong Kong artist Chui Pui Chee’s solo exhibition ‘Nine Abysses’, which showcases a large horizontal scroll of the famous ‘Nine Abysses’ ink landscape series, which is his latest blue-green shan shui painting. The artist draws from the conception of Nine Abysses, a sacred place where the divine dragons hide according to the myths. He imagines a majestic and magnificent scenery, and expresses his feelings through the natural landscape, leading the audience to roam in the transcendent spiritual world.

The blue-green shan shui painting is mainly using mineral dyes in blues and greens, which is refreshing and tranquil. Chui’s paintings are based on traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy, while containing the charm and delicacy of Song Dynasty landscape paintings. They are drawn in light ink into layers of mountains surrounded with clouds and fog, the blue and green are slightly applied to the endless mountains, it provokes the audience to imagine in the midst of a cloudy and green atmosphere.

Also, the spacious scroll gives the artist more freedom and challenges in composition and expression, while Chui creates from a modern perspective, using a mobile phone camera-like frame to present the scenery piece by piece and replace the traditional way of appreciation, it illustrates the humour derived from the differences of the times. The composition of the painting is majestic yet elegant. It not only shows the light and distance with the rich layers of ink and brushstrokes, but there are also more than a hundred pine trees of various shapes rooted in the undulating hills and valleys, which are delicately depicted and rendered one by one with thick ink. Such finishing depicts the green and upright vitality of the pine tree, in addition, it shows its perseverance standing in Nine Abysses despite the cloudy and uncertain weather.

The exhibition showcases the panoramic view of ‘Nine Abysses’ paintings, and the audience surrounded by the paintings can imagine being in the artistic world of the paintings. When we gaze at the green and blue in the misty haze, we may feel as if the breeze is coming, and we can breathe freely in nature.

Also featuring the wood sculptures of the renowned Japanese artist Yuta Nishiura, he combines his beautiful childhood memories and his experience of travelling in various places to show the unprecedented scenery through his artworks.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

Born in Hong Kong in 1980, Dr Chui apprenticed under Mr Jat See-yeu and Professor Wang Dong-ling. After graduated from Queen's College, Hong Kong in 1999, Dr Chui took his first degree at the Department of Fine Arts of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He furthered his postgraduate studies at the Department of Chinese Calligraphy of China Academy of Art, where he obtained his Master of Arts and Doctoral Degree.

In 2012, Dr Chui received the Hong Kong Contemporary Art Awards - Young Artist Award, presented by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department. He also received the Award for Young Artist (Visual Arts) at the Hong Kong Arts Development Awards 2015 organised by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. He was a finalist of The Sovereign Asian Art Prize 2015, 2018 and 2020. Some of Dr Chui’s artworks were collected by the Hong Kong Museum of Art, Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology of University of Oxford and private collectors. Recent selected exhibitions: ‘Classics Remix: The Hong Kong Viewpoint’, ‘Dawn Chorus, Happen with HART’, ‘The 2020 Sovereign Asian Art Prize: Shortlisted Finalists Exhibition’.