Mountain, Water, Storm: The Gilded Landscapes of Shum Kwan Yi
By Brynn Gordon
From the work of Post-war “New Ink” master Lui Shou Kwan to contemporary art star Lam Tung Pang, the physical geography of Hong Kong has long provided inspiration to its artists. Young artist Shum Kwan Yi’s work builds on this tradition in a new and unique way: she captures the summer rainy season, the sweeping mountains and images of ships disappearing over the horizon. Her work records the clashing heaviness and lightness between the land and sea, order and disorder.
One face of Hong Kong is the ultimate metropolis, all skyscrapers, and crowded streets. While this Hong Kong is real, the spirit of the city known to those who live there is more natural and untamed. Hong Kong has always been a place at odds with its historical, cultural, and political identity. The effect of this ebb and flow of tension between Chinese, British, Japanese, and Cantonese influences over the years has been to crystallize a core of Hong Kong-ness that is reflected in its people and the undulating landscape of the place. Three quarters of the city is countryside, 38% being protected as country parks. It is in this Hong Kong, from the vantage point of the hundreds of miles of hiking trails that crisscross the city, that Shum observes and studies the landscape that provides her inspiration.
Shum Kwan Yi, Here We Part 此地一為別 , 2023, Ink, color, silver and copper leaf on paper , A set of 3: 122 x 67.5 cm each, Grotto Fine Arts
A graduate of Hong Kong Baptist University, artist Shum Kwan Yi (born 1995) is an ink painter living and working in the city. While identifying as an ink painter first, Shum’s work draws heavily from the “Gong Bi” style of Chinese painting. Characterised by realism and a wealth of details, this style is beautiful and formal, associated with court painting of the Song period (see the work of Du Qing or Zhang Zeduan’s “Along the River During the QingMing Festival”). In the twentieth century, modernist ink painters rejected Gong Bi as stiff and antiquated because of the rigid structure traditionally ingrained in the learning and production process of the style. Typically, a “classical” painting education for Gong Bi would start in childhood, copying the work of old masters and one’s teacher to learn a visual shorthand for objects to be arranged in compositions based on an artist’s imagination or memory. Very rarely would a classical painter work from life.
Considering this association, it is surprising that Shum came to the style on her own. Interested in art from a young age, by the time she entered university “all I knew was that I liked to draw”. During the next four years she began her ink painting education, which, considering her technical ability, is incredible. Gong Bi is notoriously difficult to master. The general wisdom is that Gong Bi artists only start to mature in their fifties. Shum described the fast-paced curriculum and demanding professors on the program, as well as her initial attraction to Gong Bi. Compared to other ink styles, it could be easily applied to any subject and had huge scope for figurative depiction. “I was never interested in abstract painting. I think people have personalities that are suited to different forms of expression, and I’d feel as though I didn't have enough control”. On this topic, she explained how she enjoyed the level of detail in Gong Bi painting that allowed her to disappear into her work. “I prefer to focus and paint small things'', she said.
Despite her interest, Shum felt a disconnect between the landscapes she was producing and the real world, caused by the conventions and restrictions of the style. It was later that she experienced a breakthrough in this regard: while acting as a volunteer for an art festival in Japan, she observed artists working en plein air as part of the festival's program. Here, she saw landscapes being produced that reflected one’s surroundings rather than pre-prescribed forms, showing the possibility of an actual, tangible connection between art and her own perception of the world. No longer tied down to artistic conventions of Gong Bi, Shum was free to make her own inclusions of subject and style, to make her paintings feel accurate to what she wanted to create, which included drawing from life, incorporating new techniques and capturing within the work the thoughts and feelings her landscapes inspire in her. She said “Hong Kong is in some ways the perfect place for Chinese landscape painting. When you climb a hill in Hong Kong, you will always see the ocean in some capacity, and, in turn, you will rarely see water without also seeing islands or hills”. Composed almost entirely of the two fundamental elements of “山水畫” (landscapes, literally translates as mountain-water painting), the city provides no end of vignettes to study on her hikes. Shum regularly explores Hong Kong’s trails with a sketchbook to make studies of views that interest her. These en plein air sketches often are the starting point for her finished pieces.
Part of the beauty of Shum’s work is her ability to seamlessly weave many varied influences together to create work that is both original and timeless. Her modern art education means she does not limit herself to a certain aesthetic. For example, she had adopted the Japanese technique of gilding, inspired by the Rakuchu Rakugai Screen, as a hallmark of her style. Coming across the screen on a study abroad program in Nagoya, this striking depiction of the ancient capital inspired her to use this technique in her own work. While Shum generally follows the traditional application of this technique to show clouds, she makes it her own by working in silver and copper foil rather than gold and by applying an oxidizing solution to create a visual effect comparable to a coming rainstorm, or an oil spill. The wonderfully heavy, fantastical atmosphere that the oxidised metal creates lends an additional organic quality to Shum’s landscapes. The gilding will continue to oxidise and change over time as it reacts to its surroundings. While showing me her gilding supplies and explaining the process, Shum jokes “This is where I can be abstract in my work”.
Shum Kwan Yi, Copy of Rakuchu Rakugai Screen 臨洛中洛外圖 , 2017, Ink, color, and gold leaf on paper, 98 x 137 cm, Grotto Fine Arts
She also spoke of the globalisation of the art world, especially within ink painting. In the past, each country and region would develop their own unique style which she believes has been overtaken by a homogenisation within the contemporary Asian art scene. It is this worry that prompted Shum to include in her work identifiers of origin, elements that are unmistakably from Hong Kong. Rather than relying on the well-known city skyline, however, Shum’s seascapes are instead populated by fishing boats, ferries, container ships, symbols of the city’s seafaring history. Obviously, these are atypical motifs for a classical painting, but provide a charming degree of realism as well as being loaded with personal significance to her audience. For example, Shum’s inclusion of these familiar elements of life in the city was what initially drew me to work. To me, her paintings were like being on the bridge over the Hong Kong Container Port looking out to the sea, towards rolling, distant clouds and ships pulling out of the harbour. Shum captured a moment unique to a place and an individual.
Shum Kwan Yi, Wish You All the Best 願你一切安好, 2022, Ink, color and copper leaf on paper, 20.5 x 112.5 cm, Grotto Fine Art
Aside from ships and mountains, Shum is also known from her series painted on hand-ruled and gridded writing paper, reflecting another aspect of Hong Kong desperately familiar to those who live there. Synonymous with Chinese-language education, Shum uses these memories of school to frame her small-scale studies of branches and stones as characters and words. Over the course of the interview, she brought up Xu Bing’s 1991 work “Book from the Sky”, as an inspiration. She stated, “I like how he tackles huge concepts and conceptualizes them in his work”. Xu Bing often focuses on language, and in this work created an installation comprising four thousand mock-Chinese characters to point out the obtuse nature of the Chinese literary tradition and man’s relationship with language and is generally very frustrating to read. There are common themes in Xu’s work and Shum’s installation “A New Language”, where she subverts the rigidity and restrictions of Chinese art and education systems. Here, she plays on the widely accepted restrictions within ink painting, as outlined previously, presenting them within the context of a similarly ridged academic setting that many within the local Hong Kong school system experience firsthand; each stone and branch neatly categorized and put in a box. Both Xu and Shum let such restrictions inspire their work rather than impede it.
Xu Bing, Book From the Sky 1987-1991, Mixed media installation, HKMOA
There is also an impenetrable, code-like quality to these pieces. Shum constructs a sort of key within her “A New Language” installation, laying out a “language” of sixteen types of stones on a type of whiteboard with a student’s copybook to write them down. These “characters” are arranged in different combinations to make sentences and paragraphs in her works “Composition of Stones”, as though they were a working language. On this series, Shum states “When you are taught these few words or symbols over and over again, you have to use them as there is no other way to communicate. Eventually, even though they become boring, they become all one can reproduce”. This sentiment echoes her own initial impression of Chinese painting, drawing parallels between the limitations of the classical approach to the art and the inhibiting way it is taught. Shum also makes a link with the Orwellian idea of “Doublespeak”, drawing yet another parallel with the restrictions within art and the restrictions that can be placed on language and thought, giving the schoolroom elements of gridded paper, desk and chair a sinister undertone. Shum is not only capable of creating beautiful, atmospheric landscapes, but layered and nuanced conceptual work too.
Shum Kwan Yi, A New Language 新語 , 2022 , School desk, chair, ink and color on paper , booklet: 19 x 13 cm (15 pages); painting: set of 3 : 80 x 137, 80 x 139, 80 x 137 cm, Grotto Fine Art
The impact of recent events in Shum’s work also must be addressed. Few in Hong Kong remain unaffected by the events of the last few years, and it can at times feel as though there is a cloud over the city. Since her graduation, there has been a marked change in the tone of Shum’s paintings: there has been a shift from bright and colorful pieces to a more neutral palette, and now to the dense atmosphere of her most recent work. Shum believes that these recent changes in her city have made her art better, more complex, and subtle. “Art made in times of peace is just for fun”, she says. In the uncertainty brought by change that the Hong Kong people have and will continue to face, it can be a comfort to see such beautiful representations not only of their landscape (one element of life that remains largely consistent) but of their thoughts, moods and, for lack of a better term, emotional landscape.
Shum’s work is rapidly gaining recognition in Hong Kong art circles, being one of the artists involved in the “Artist Tram Project” promoting Hong Kong Art Basel 2022. Her piece “Why You Always Be Here and Watch”, quite fittingly, was used to decorate the exterior of an iconic Hong Kong tram, exposing her work to hundreds of people every day over the course of the promotion.
Shum Kwan Yi, Why You Always be Here and Watch 你為什麼總是在看 , 2021 , Ink, colour and silver leaf on paper, 178 x 82.5 cm, Grotto Fine Art
Shum was a pleasure to interview. Her light amiability is at odds with the intensity in her work, but perhaps being even keeled is what is necessary to allow one to draw from many varied sources without relying too heavily on any one. Her desire for classical aesthetic refinement never overshadows her instincts to produce contemporary work, nor the clarity of her message. Her work continues to evolve and change as does the city that inspires her. However, despite change, experimentation, and the process of amalgamation there is one constant: Shum Kwan Yi continues to produce beautiful, sharp, ever more interesting works.
Notes:
“Exhibitions”, Shum Kwan Yi 2023. https://shumkwanyi.com/exhibitions
“Categories of Chinese Painting”, Global Times, September 2010. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/576336.shtml
Department of Asian Art, “Landscape Painting in Chinese Art”. Heliburn Timeline of Art History, The Met. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/clpg/hd_clpg.htm
“Scenes in and Around the Capital”. The Met. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/53428
“Book From the Sky”, Artwork, Xu Bing 2023. http://www.xubing.com/en/work/details/206?year=1991&type=year#206
Bhullar, Dilpreet. “Art Basel Hong Kong 2022 foregrounded Asia’s best art across the mediums”. Stir World, June 2022. https://www.stirworld.com/see-features-art-basel-hong-kong-2022-foregrounded-asia-s-best-art-across-the-mediums