Koon Wai Bong
Luxuriant Greenery
Color on Japanese Shikishi Cardboard
120 x 80 cm
2023
Born in 1974 and based in Taiwan currently, Koon Wai Bong received his B.A. and M.F.A. from The Chinese University of Hong Kong and his D.F.A. from the RMIT University. He has attained many awards during his career including Hong Kong Contemporary Art Biennial Award in 2009, and widely exhibited his artworks in museums, galleries and art fairs across the world.
In his painting, the calligraphic expression of brushwork and the manifold layering of ink washing or colour tinting drive him to travel to ancient times and open a dialogue with the early masters. None of the scenery in his work is a direct record of any real-life scene, each landscape motif is intended to reveal his understanding of nature and his feelings towards the scenic sites he has visited. Through the process of painting, his intention is not simply to construct what he has seen, but to deconstruct the scenes in his head and reconstruct a ‘mental landscape’ based on what he felt during his travels and what he imagined afterwards. That’s why his paintings can be perceived as an artistic means of transmitting emotion from the innermost part of his mind, and as a portal through which you can enter his spiritual reality and travel with him.