Sin Sin is delighted to show the works of two renowned local artists: painter Wong YanKwai and ceramist Suzy Cheung at her gallery spaces. This is a show like no others.

What happens when two artists who are married to each other work to create art together? The seeds for this joint exhibition of painter Wong YanKwai and ceramist Suzy Cheung were first planted in 1992, when YanKwai painted the surface of a ceramic vessel that Suzy created. It was quite a different experience for YanKwai to paint using ceramic glazes as the colors wouldn’t be as readily visible as say, acrylic paints that he is accustomed to. The resulting piece is a perfectly balanced marriage of form, lines and colors. They complement each other, inside and out; the open, uneven rim of the vessel shaped by Suzy’s hands echoes the warmth of YanKwai’s expressive brush strokes.

This led to a plan for more collaborative works, which took a while to actually materialize. They were waiting for the right time, and now, the time has finally arrived. In this show, fresh collaborative works by Suzy and YanKwai are made available to the public for the first time. They come in various shapes and sizes; displaying deep-connected dialogues between the two artists. Notice the ease with which YanKwai’s brush strokes moving along the curves that Suzy sculpted. How naturally they seem to belong to each other. And yet, how distinctively authentic each of their contributions is to every single work.

Besides their collaborative works, Suzy is also showing her functional vessels and sculptural pieces. Some of the works involve multiple firings, with underglaze and overglaze techniques. There are a group of works featuring “sketching with clay” and inlays on porcelain. These works illustrate Suzy’s deft handling of the clay to transform the medium into an extension of her vision, without betraying the true nature of the clay itself. This seems to come naturally for her.

An urban child who has always longed for countryside, Suzy feels the pull of nature that draws her to observe the plants and trees around her, to collect seeds and plant them to see how they would come out, to gather rocks and seashells, to listen to the wind and watch the waves. There are hidden surprises in her work which we would find the longer and the closer we relate to them; the way nature reveals to us the wonders of creation when we are open and attentive to it. Time and again, Suzy married the unforgivingly delicate pale porcelain to the hardy red earthenware clay to draw thin lines that make up her “sketching in clay” series. These lines are integral parts of the piece, they are not just sitting on the surface: they hold the pieces together. They became one. A whole.

Wong YanKwai is a consummate painter, a fact that does not prevent him from also working with sculpture, photography, video and postal art. Colour is his primary material; it makes up the structure, form and movement of his work. Bright and strong, his colours overlap, contrast, beckon and push against each other producing a strong musical resonance that keeps them in constant movement. His work is constant creation and destruction in motion. These highly charged paintings leave a strong impression on the viewer. One can sometimes see a familiar object among the many forms that make up his work, such as an airplane or fish, but they have been partially altered, losing their shape, identity and nature. The painter has recreated them by making them into simple “colour-objects” with which he plays liberally on the canvas.

His painting style consists of an uninterrupted dialogue with the canvas. “I’m always looking for balance in my paintings. Initially, the white canvas is perfectly balanced. The moment you put down the first stroke of paint, you destroy its stability. The game then begins with the second stroke. You destroy the painting and then you try to reconstruct another point of equilibrium with that second stroke and so on. Painting is like walking on a tight wire. The wire is still, but the moment you step on it, it starts to move. So, you have to feel the vibrations of the cord and learn how to keep your balance; each journey is always different”.

(the last two paragraphs are taken from an essay by Gérard Henry, used with permission)

View The Artworks