Traditional Chinese ink paintings meet modern technology in exhibition by Hong Kong artist, featuring abstract pieces and his first NFT release

Hong Kong artist Wong Chung-yu’s exhibition ‘The Endless Beauty of Ink’ features physical ink paintings and digital works made using a program of his own design

One of Wong’s digital works on show is a semiabstract depiction of the mountainous greenery south of the Yangtze River. It will be sold as a non-fungible token

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Farewell the Winter, the Spring Arrives Jiangnan (2021) by Wong Chung-yu is a digital painting and comes with the artist’s first non-fungible token. It will feature in a new exhibition. Photo: Wong Chung-yu

Published: 4:00pm, 20 May 2022

“The Endless Beauty of Ink”, a new exhibition by Wong Chung-yu, features a mix of physical Chinese ink paintings and digital works created using a computer program of the Hong Kong artist’s own design over the past three years.

Wong, who has master’s degrees in both computer science and fine art, is best known for merging traditional ink art with modern technology. In 2020, he released the first version of Pure ink, a free software that can simulate the experience of painting with ink on paper, and he has been refining it ever since. He hopes that it can promote the digitalisation of ink art and encourage more people to learn about traditional techniques.

The accuracy of the digital creations is “identical to painting on paper”, he says, with users being able to control the condensed and diluted states of ink, as well as the force applied by brush strokes.

One of the digital works on show at the Sheung Wan gallery a.m. space, on Hong Kong Island, is Farewell the Winter, the Spring Arrives Jiangnan (2021), a semiabstract depiction of the mountainous greenery south of the Yangtze River as the seasons change. It will be sold as a non-fungible token (NFT), making it Wong’s first NFT release.

Clean Light With No Dirt (2019) by Wong Chung-yu. Photo: Wong Chung-yu

Works by Wong, who has practised ink art for more than two decades, are included in the collections of the M+ museum and the Hong Kong Museum of Art, both in Kowloon. He has also exhibited widely across mainland China, including at the Hubei Museum of Art, in Wuhan. Wong says that this, his seventh exhibition, marks a turning point for him.