journal

Day 1 – September 1 2024 – Hong Kong

Hello Hong Kong. It’s been 14 years!

Hello Hong Kong.

You are very steamy.

It’s early. We are staying at the Eaton HK Workshop:

it's like a scene from a dream
the architecture follows another logic
cars like in a display showroom
beside the lifts
There's a guy to direct you inside
to the lobby and checkin
a guy who opens the door
the ones you expect at reception,
where you notice the T-shirt,
of another race
a guy to show you into the lift

whose T-shirt reads Human
on the front and on the back
Progress.

… and then …

… and then, in Kowloon Park …

{open brackets for the interior shots Dim Sum and Hong Kong Museum of Modern Art shot on cellphone, but first an interior shot of the Eaton HK Workshop Hotel –

… and a miniature fruit stand –

… then, Dim Sum on the waterfront –

We were first through the door.

The view:

The freshest rice rolls and crunchiest prawns. Then, HK MOMA, a short walk away.

An exhibition that asked which of the four personality types are you? And, therefore, which of the four scents appointed to those types suits your personality?

A questionnaire on touchscreen at the entrance posed a number of questions to ascertain personality type, whether the Fashionista, Perfectionist, Adventurer or the Elegant.

I was –

… each type had its own exhibition. The Adventurer –

and

by Lam Yau-sum, born 1981. There were throughout references to the literati, the trees here resembling those in literati paintings.

And,

by Chang Kin-chung, born 1939, who studied in France. This work from 1979, Composition No. 49, is acrylic on canvas. Its warm and elegant colour is said to resemble that on Ru ware of the Northern Song dynasty.

I enjoyed the movement in –

and the voids, achieved despite Western technique, of Pang Jiun’s The Footprints of Bai Juyi (Su Zhou Moon Bay), 2013,

Perfectionist followed, nothing grabbing me until the humour of –

Zhang Wei’s Fountain – Fan Kuan vs Duchamp, 2000, the first work in the Fashionista series, which seemed to count Coco Chanel and Marcel Duchamp as belonging to the type.

The scents for each personality type were available as scented stickers in the exhibition – and, after the exhibition, purchasable.

These beautiful bugs by Guan Liangchang, from the mid-19th century, gouache on paper –

Covid Delftware –

and at the bottom of the building the most poorly realised work, which was a shame, since the artists responsible had contributed the scent elements to the personality-type exhibition –

A brilliant exhibition of Jat See-yeu’s calligraphy –

… then onto these –

snuff bottles, with video projections extending onto the floor:

… you can see a theme here, water crying, as earlier in the golden painting.

– to these we can ask, How paint the inside of the glass?

with so much humour!

Kedi! a theme developed in Istanbul.

Is this Sun Wukong making an appearance?

Again, painted from the inside.

this legend, included because of another theme taken up in Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence, to avoid triumphalist names for hotels, restaurants and so on, call them not the Regency but Foyer, vestibule … a preference for humility.