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.

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By Clare Tyrrell