CHOW CHUN-FAI
Painter Chow Chun-fai was one of the first artists to move into Fo Tan’s factory buildings. “Having a studio in Hong Kong has always been a luxury,” he says. “But when I graduated from Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2003, it was the middle of the Sars crisis, so it was very cheap.”
Even so, he couldn’t afford a space of his own, so shared his first studio with two friends. “We used to discuss how artists in Hong Kong had reversed western art history,” he recalls. “In the west, artists would often work in a studio first, doing paintings and drawings, then [later in their career] would explore other media like installation and performance. In Hong Kong, having a studio was always too expensive, so in the ’80s and ’90s most artists were working outside of studios and not doing painting or other traditional studio art. We were really the first Hong Kong artists to have studios.”
It’s only because he had a studio that Chow could pursue his love of painting and develop the sumptuous style that has made him one of the city’s most respected and successful artists. He’s best known for his Paintings
on Movies series, for which he reproduces subtitled stills from classic Hong Kong films that—removed from their original context—can be read as snappy comments on the city today.
These works take shape in Chow’s latest studio, a bright, airy space that overlooks the green hills behind Fo Tan—and which Chow has all to himself. The walls are lined with paintings-in-progress ranging in size from A4 sheets to metres-long canvases—some of them his famous film stills, others more traditional paintings of Hong Kong’s urban landscape. Some of these will be exhibited this month at Gallery Exit, which is hosting a solo show of Chow’s paintings from March 14 to May 16.
In the nearly 20 years Chow has worked in Fo Tan, he’s seen wave after wave of artists move in and make the district their own. But today, he’s worried it’s once again becoming harder for young artists to get a foot on the ladder. “It’s expensive [to get a studio] again,” he says. “It’s not easy for young artists. In other cities—london, New York, Tokyo—artists can move into suburban areas. But in Hong Kong, Fo Tan is already the suburbs. There is nowhere else to go.”