Hong Kong’s eccentric Frog King stays one jump ahead of the art-scene pack with madcap desire to spread happiness
From his jungle lair in Yuen Long, in the city’s New Territories, the eccentric force of nature and living work of art – who is now possibly 70 years old, possibly not – continues to create and surprise
The performance artist known as Frog King lives up the sort of tangled, overgrown path that makes you think less about frogs and more about snakes (although the greater immediate hazard is probably the mosquitoes). Here, he hunkers down alone, working day and night.
All available space – including an abandoned chicken farm and an old pig pen – is crammed either with his creations or encroaching nature.
While researching this article, I’d read an essay by Benny Chia Chun-heng, founder of Hong Kong’s Fringe Club, who curated Frog King’s show at the 2011 Venice Biennale and said that the artist had wanted to take over the Hong Kong pavilion with a forest of installation pieces, “just like the trees at Angkor Wat”. Budgetary constraints curtailed that dream, but it appears to be coming true on the outskirts of Yuen Long.
Given the location, I wasn’t entirely sure beforehand which avatar would present itself: Frog King or Kwok Mang-ho, the man behind the amphibian and a presence on the Hong Kong art scene since the 1960s.
In recent years, Kwok seems to have been swallowed up by Frog King, but I thought he might use the opportunity to re-emerge from the undergrowth.
Amid the banana trees, bamboo and bougainvillea at the far end of the lane, however, a glittering figure appears at the appointed hour, swaying from side to side like a sorcerer revving up for a ritual. In the ’70s, Kwok created his own Chinese term for an art happening – hark bun lum, which phonetically sounds like “arrival of the guest”. For Frog King, it’s a form of artistic noblesse oblige: a happening starts with the entrance of the audience, no matter how small.
Still, he’s not entirely averse to breaking the fourth wall, and there is a brief consultation with the photographer (should he switch the light attached to his hat on or off?) before he plucks a pair of Froggy sunglasses from a row hanging over his desk, drapes a piece of Froggy-carved wood round his neck and picks up a toilet-roll holder to wave as a sceptre.