Hong Kong artists shine bright at Florence Biennale

Four artists from Hong Kong — Liu Hongrui, Eva Ku, Cheng Xiaowei, and Ho Chun-yu — are taking part in the 15th Florence Biennale. The current edition features more than 600 mid-career and emerging artists from 84 countries and regions.

"Diverse styles, techniques, and media embody the philosophy of the Florence Biennale," says the event's director, Jacopo Celona. "Our selection of Hong Kong artists highlights this diversity across various fields, including painting, photography, and fine art jewelry, reflecting the richness of contemporary artistic expression."

Born in Shenzhen and raised in Hong Kong, Liu is currently based in London. The artist says that his oil and distemper on canvas work, White Landscape, is informed by the Surrealists' fascination with the relationship between inner lives and the world. It is an expressionistic landscape, with blobs and dots of color suggesting buildings rising from behind the hills and reflected on the sea water in the foreground. While the Hong Kong landscape features are obvious, Liu says that the painting has traces of England in it as well.

Liu says he carries Hong Kong in his heart, no matter where he is based. He adds that "the imagery of Hong Kong, its atmosphere as I remember it and a sense of belonging there" usually find their way into his works, and White Landscape is no exception. It is a serene piece of work, created with overlapping brushstrokes that emerge from a residue of encounters and experiences left in the artist's mind.

Liu says that the Les Nabis artists — French Post-Impressionist and Symbolist painters, active in Paris toward the end of the 19th century — particularly Pierre Bonnard, are a major influence on him. His Chinese inspirations include Qiu Xiaofei, whose ability to articulate memories through representation fascinates him.

Ku has eight paintings in the exhibition. A Midsummer Night's Dream depicts a fantastical scene, awash with bold colors. The mixed-media piece incorporates collage, image transfer, and painting. In this whimsical image, the women sport weird hairdos and share space with a strange creature. Ku says she draws inspiration from fairy tales, books, and films that shaped her childhood.

Another of her works, called Earth's Cry, is a semi-abstract painting. It is Ku's response to heavy rain in Hong Kong causing a landslide and emphasizes the co-existence of beauty and fragility in nature.

Ku adds that she does not have a signature style as she does not want to limit her choices. Her artworks are "spontaneous creations", significantly influenced by Hong Kong stalwart Gaylord Chan and the Russian-French master Marc Chagall.

Guangzhou-born, Hong Kong-based jewelry artist Cheng is presenting her collection titled The Bronze Era. The nine pieces in it are inspired by the decorative patterns found on bronze artifacts from the Shang Dynasty (c. 16th century-11th century BC) and Zhou Dynasty (c. 11th century-256 BC).

Cheng presents ancient decorative artisanal filigree work with a modern twist. Each piece is meticulously handcrafted in her Hong Kong workshop. "One finds the East-meets-West design philosophy in my work," Cheng says, adding that she counts the Chinese master painters Wu Guanzhong and Zao Wou-ki among her inspirations.

Hong Kong-born Ho Chun-yu is into camera-less photography. He is presenting a series of artworks under the title, From Cloud to Ground. Though he doesn't use a camera, Ho applies techniques of both analog and digital photography to process his works, creating maze-like images on instant film.

In their own distinct ways, all of these works reflect the biennale's theme this year — "the sublime essence of light and darkness: concepts of dualism and unity in contemporary design". They all highlight a mix of opposites — tradition and innovation, the East and West, inner worlds and the external world, creation and destruction — while also drawing attention to ideas of harmony and symmetry.

IF YOU GO

The 15th Florence Biennale

Dates: Through Oct 26

Venue: Fortezza da Basso, viale Filippo Strozzi 1, Florence

www.florencebiennale.org/en/