Artist offers a bird's eye view of Hong Kong sights
Aerial photos are a common sight, but how about aerial paintings? Artist offers a different take on Hongkongers' high-rise existence
Few would argue that Hong Kong is a bustling city. Using bright vibrant hues interspersed with shimmering gold accents and armed with a unique perspective, local artist Martin Lever attempts to capture the magic that distinguishes this city from the rest of the world.
Lever's collection of oil and acrylic paintings depicts locations around Hong Kong from a bird's-eye view. Titled "Above/Below", the so-called "groundscapes" series, Lever says, highlights the relationship between what happens at street level and life on the top floor of a skyscraper.
"I was searching for a fresh way to visualise some of the stories that Hong Kong has to tell," Lever says. "The insight that I hit on was that we spend so much of our time up in the air in Hong Kong. It's a vertical city. We sleep on the 30th floor, we eat on the 20th and we work on the 10th, but we very rarely look down."
The lofty concept not only describes the physical vantage point of the paintings, but also represents Lever's goal to tell Hong Kong's real stories.
"There are so many iconic images, but I've always felt that the longer you're here the more you realise that the magic is behind that surface layer, behind the tourist veneer and clichés," says Lever.
It is not the first time Lever has used Hong Kong as inspiration for his art. But the Briton says this series is different owing to a "double layer" of meaning he was able to create within each piece.
