Art and Place: Essays on Art From a Hong Kong Perspective

14. The Art of Yank Wong

The Art ofYank Wong Yank Wong belongs to the same generation of artists as Antonio Mak. He also studied overseas, but in France rather than England, and his more sensuous approach to painting can be related to French modernist precedents. Because of the difficulty ofgetting a professional art training in Hong Kong, the number of artists who are able to draw upon deep reserves of technical ability is relatively small. One of the reasons I decided to concentrate on formal issues in this essay was to demonstrate that Yank's paintings are capable of bearing sustained analysis at that level. This piece was first published in Art and Asia Pacific. That Australian periodical is, to my knowledge, the first international publication to demonstrate a sustained interest in Hong Kong art. The paintings of Yank Wong, recent examples of which were on show at Gallery 7 in Hong Kong during March 1995, can be characterized as having a layered feel. To build up several layers of paint is of course a commonplace way of working in acrylic, but my point is not so much one about technique as one about how the final image looks to the eye. The paint layers remain relatively distinct, thus creating a sense of depth through overlap, although the cues of depth are never allowed to add up to a coherent reading that would undermine a sense of the integrity of the two-dimensional design. An ambiguity of figure and ground is always introduced since the dominant colour in an image, the one which reads as the 'ground' because of its presence without significant modulation over a large area of the canvas surface (and often because of its relative 'neutrality' in comparison with the singing hues to which it is juxtaposed as well), has usually been added at what is clearly a late stage. 105 Hong Kong Art Figure 14.1 Yank Wong, Point Final, 1994. Photo courtesy Gallery 7. 106 Two examples of works in which rhe 'background' is a layer ncar rhe top in this way are Rules (Un Tableau Carrement. Rand) (1994; plate 5) and Grey Still (1994; plate 6). In these two paintings, as in others by the arrist, there are also subject marter hints which seem to want ro encourage further our reading of the dominam colour as background. The first of these twO works, for instance, might perhaps be interpreted as depicting a table with objects on it. The brown area (i f we follow th is reading) becomes the floot 011 which the table is standing, a plane further away in space but parallel to that of the tablerop itself. In Grey Still the grey helps define the comou rs of objects, helps bring them into bei ng, albeit that they then read as objects on rop of a grey surface, Occasionally depicted objects atta in a high degree of legibility (for instance an amphoralike form in the botrom lefr of Point Final, 1994; fig. 14.1 ), but generally Wong keeps the subject matter hints vague, so as ro prevent roo coherent an illusory space being establ ished. Although, as I've been trying to indicate, Wong does nor allow us ro fully stabilize our reading of the order in which the various byers of the image were added, it seems as if a largely spontaneous first stage of work is followed by the application of a later, more controlled layer. I don't wam ro overemphasize this rwo·stage property (which is found in a more exrreme, c1ear·cur version in cerrain works by Miro), bur despite the schematic narure of this characterization I think it can throw some light on the paimings. The earlier stage of working seems to involve wetter, more translucenr paim applied in a free manner. A variety of sensuous colours appear, and a strongly lyrical feel is introduced. The later stage involves the application of a less fluid layer of paint, and opaque effects predominate. The colouristic diversity gives way at The Art of Yank Wong Figure 14.2 Yank Wong, Les 100 Pas de /a 1000 Patte, 1994. Photo courtesy Gallery 7. 107 Hong Kong Art 108 this point, and what I have earlier referred to as the 'dominant' or 'ground' colour appears. In the two works mentioned above there is only a single such colour, but in others, such as Les 100 Pas de la 1000 Patte (1994; fig...