Coming Out Of His Shell

"Christopher Ku hasn't exhibited my work for 10 years. Now he's showing a decade's worth of art in his hometown."

It has been a turbulent 10 years for Hong Kong-born artist Christopher Ku. Things seemed to be going well at first. After getting his MFA from London's Royal College of Art in 1990, Ku went back to Scotland where he had spent most of his 20s, and became a well-known success within the artistic community there.
Then he decided to enter a prestigious competition.

But the day before, Ku was told that his painting overran the size limit. With no other painting small enough to submit, he quickly threw together a canvas, and the next morning splashed it with color. He won first prize. That inspired him to do something rather odd.

Ku discarded the style that was earning him success. He began to deconstruct both the technical laws of painting, as well as the world that turned around him. Taking his art into the darkest reaches of philosophical uncertainty, he forced himself to move beyond the boundaries of the knowledge he took for granted. He knew that he had to invent, he had to create something unseen.

 

Ten years on, sitting in the Fringe Club, Ku pretty much thinks that he's done it, and impressed reactions across Britain suggest that maybe he has. His exhibition Time and Being, which will be showing at the Fringe Clubs Nokia Gallery, is the product of this 10-year journey into hermitage. After refusing to allow anyone to see over a decade of intensive work, the artist is revealing his creations to his hometown audience for the first time.

 

Ku believes in intellectualizing the world. And he definitely doesn't think that a painting should tell a story. "Painting doesn't need to have a narrative"' remarks Ku."Other mediums such as films, storybooks, operas, and plays can do this. But with painting, there is only this flat surface- it doesn't make sense to try to tell a narrative. Yet so many artists try to, and produce all this visual pollution and confusion. What we need is much more focus" For Ku, the function of art is "a rehearsal of the real event, which is why artists always try to develop what is ahead of them." He has much to say about the digital age and the dying nature of myths and ritualistic behavior. With 10 years of solid thinking and endless experimentation, he believes chat he has created a visual representation of what he calls "the birth of all virtual humanity."

 

Glance at the man's paintings and you'll immediately see what all his philosophical wafflings are about. They are enormous abstract creations of curious landscapes, which are startingly original A remarkable depth jumps out from the layers of digital symbols and root-like structures painted in oil. "I was once giving a lecture at a university in Manchester and the entire lecture hall gasped out loud when I turned the slide on," he says. "They were all quite shocked."

 

Despite the new frontiers Ku has leapt into and the astounding reaction he gains from his audience, galleries are hesitant about exhibiting his work. The pieces are hard to sell, and are also physically quite enormous. Ku had some trouble bringing the works to his native city for the first time. Two Hong Kong galleries pulled out at the last minute, and appealing to the Museum of Art was unsuccessful. Fortunately though, the Fringe Club's Nokia Gallery came to the rescue. Providing the backdrop so the bar's drinkers and shakers, this exhibition is as a good excuse as any to make it down to the Fringe Club for both a glass of wine and a peer into the staggering sight of the future.

 

Time Being shows until Jul 16 at the Fringe Club, 2 Lower Albert Rd, Central 2521-7251. Open Mon-Sat noon-10pm

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By Clare Tyrrell