Never End: The Art and Life of Gaylord Chan

19 June 2024 - 02 February 2025

Asia Society Hong Kong Center proudly presents Never End: The Art and Life of Gaylord Chan, the artist’s first retrospective since his passing in 2020.

Chantal Miller Gallery
June 19 - February 2, 2025
Tuesday – Sunday
11:00am – 6:00pm

Gaylord Chan (1925-2020) was a prominent Hong Kong artist who only formally began his painting career in his 40s, developing a unique, youthful, and iconographic mode of abstract painting that he continued into digital art in his later years. Chan was also a beloved teacher, basing his pedagogy off his own experiences as a painter and shaping the next generation of Hong Kong artists. Never End includes a selection of paintings, rarely exhibited digital drawings, and newly organized archival materials that pay tribute to the artist’s art, life, and ongoing legacy.

The exhibition is guest curated by Joyce Hei-ting Wong with Josephine Chow as Exhibition Consultant and Hain Yoon as Assistant Curator. With support provided by Hong Kong Arts Development Council, Virginia and Wellington Yee, Margie Yang and Dee Poon, Rita and KC Kung, and Mystic Island Winery.

We encourage visitors to share their experience in the gallery on social media with the tags #ASHKNeverEnd #ASHKGaylordChan and #NeverEndGaylordChan.

亞洲協會香港中心榮幸呈獻「明天會再來：陳餘生藝術展」，這是畫家自2020年逝世後首次回顧展覽。

麥禮賢夫人藝術館
2024年6月19日至2025年2月2日
週二至週日
11 點至 6 點

陳餘生（1925-2020）是香港著名藝術家，四十多歲時才正式開始繪畫生涯，發展出一種獨特、年輕、圖像化的抽象繪畫模式，並在晚年延續到數位藝術。陳先生也是一位受人愛戴的老師，他的教學基於他自己作為畫家的經歷，並塑造了下一代香港藝術家。「明天會再來」包括精選的繪畫作品、罕見展出的數位繪畫以及新整理的檔案材料，向藝術家的藝術、生活和持續的遺產致敬。

本展覽由客席策展人黃熙婷聯合展覽顧問周淑芬，及亞洲協會香港中心助理策展人Hain Yoon策劃。是次展覽得到多方支持，包括：香港藝術發展局、Virginia and Wellington Yee、Margie Yang and Dee Poon 、Rita and KC Kung及仙島酒莊。

我們希望觀眾在社交媒體上使用標籤分享他們在畫廊的經歷#ASHKNeverEnd #ASHKGaylordChan and #NeverEndGaylordChan

Curatorial Statement

Widely respected and beloved as one of Hong Kong’s most original painters, Gaylord Chan (1925-2020) had a dynamic career that traversed cultural epochs and the boundaries of medium. He made his first serious foray into painting only at the age of 42 after enrolling in an extra-mural studies art course organized by the University of Hong Kong in 1968. Chan’s late start, however, did not at all limit his potential. While he worked as an engineer for Cable & Wireless by day, Chan continued to experiment and refine his creative practice. The artist eventually developed a unique abstract language of bold colours and rustic forms that reflects on the simple wonders of daily life, science and metaphysics, and the contemporary human condition. Referencing an evocative painting by Chan from the 1990s, Never End: The Art and Life of Gaylord Chan presented by Asia Society Hong Kong Center is a tribute to the late master and his invaluable artistic legacy with over 100 works including paintings, digital drawings, and more.

“The Grammar of Painting”

The exhibition opens by introducing Chan in both his roles as an artist and an educator. After Chan retired from Cable & Wireless in 1989, he became a full-time painter and founded the Culture Corner Art Academy with his wife and fellow artist Josephine Chow. Integrating what he had learnt through extra-mural studies at HKU and his personal experience with the craft of painting, Chan developed his own pedagogy that offered an alternative model of arts education outside of the academy. His teachings are documented in the treatise Ten Lectures on Painting (2008) and succinctly outlined by his “fifteen-word mantra” – foreground and background, mass and void, light and shade, form, colour, texture. Anchored on Chan’s pedagogy, this section will feature a selection of works from the 1960s to 1990s that explores the artist’s personal “grammar of painting” and offer the audience with ways to decipher his inventive brand of abstraction.

“Glyphs of Innocence and Experience”

On the nature of abstract painting, Chan believed that it is foremost concerned with the expression of feelings. Whether mundane objects, natural scenery, music, film, or literature, anything that was able to provoke Chan’s emotional life became his inspiration and subject. While his abstract repository appears eclectic, certain images recur throughout his oeuvre to create a personal iconography – disembodied biomorphic forms, tines, eyes, and curtained portals. Focusing on Chan’s enigmatic “glyphs” that responded to the tides of modern life, this section explores the artist’s control of line and color in creating naive yet vital forms that speak to his inner world, his interest in indigenous and folk arts, and his unique way of seeing that operates on the threshold between figuration and abstraction.

“Seeing Between the Colors”

In 1990, Chan was awarded Artist of the Year by the Hong Kong Artists’ Guild, a prelude to his period of mature and fruitful creation. Besides powerful motifs that bear the gravitas of insignia, Chan also produced more painterly works that pushed the possibilities of figure-ground relations. With a selection of works ranging from the 1990s to early 2000s, this section explores Chan’s mature construction of layered pictorial spaces in perpetual movement that unfold as ambiguous realms of imagination alongside his little-known poetry on current affairs, the origin of life, and the meaning of the universe in today’s age of virtual technology.

“From Canvas to Screen”

At the age of 80, Chan once said that he felt he was living on borrowed time after having survived a severe car crash, heart attacks, strokes, and lung cancer at different stages in his life that totalled into eleven major operations. Yet throughout these trials and tribulations, Chan never lost his passion for life and turned his physical limitations into creative opportunities. After his stroke, Chan played solitaire on the computer as a form of self-therapy to recover his motor skills and mental reflex—this eventually led him to using Microsoft Paint, a simple raster graphics editor, as a new painting tool. From the late-2000s onwards, Chan created entirely with Microsoft Paint as working with acrylic on canvas became too physically demanding after losing a quarter of his lungs to cancer. Drawing on the computer required Chan to completely reinvent his practice, and his digital artworks feature some of his most interesting experiments with dot, line, plane, and color theory. Focused on a rarely exhibited selection of digital artworks projected in cinematic format as the artist had always wanted to attempt, this section explores how Chan adapted his practice from the analogue to the digital in his late works.

Gaylord Chan had the rare talent and fortune of leading two successful careers in a prolific life – the first in telecommunications for which he was awarded an MBE in 1986, and the second in visual arts from which he not only received a Bronze Bauhinia Star in 2013 but also found his lifelong calling. Upon the fourth anniversary of the late artist’s passing in 2020, this thematic retrospective enriches extant research on Chan with newly organized archival materials and celebrates the art and legacy of a resilient free-spirit in his first institutional monograph in over 40 years. This exhibition is organized by guest curator Joyce Hei-ting Wong with the guidance of exhibition consultant Josephine Chow alongside Hain Yoon, Assistant Curator at Asia Society Hong Kong Center.

亞洲協會香港中心
「明天會再來：陳餘生藝術展」
2024年6月19日至9月29日

陳餘生（1925-2020）是香港最具原創性的畫家之一，跨越不同時代、文化及媒介的創作備受喜愛、影響深遠。他於1968年入讀香港大學校外藝術與設計課程，首次正式涉足繪畫，雖然已過不惑之年，但起步較晚并沒有限制他的潛能。他當時在大東電報局擔任工程師，閑時醉心鑽研精進創作，漸漸發展出色彩濃重、形態稚拙的獨特抽象藝術語言，抒發他對日常生活、科技和形而上學、當代人類境況等等的感悟。本展覽借題自陳氏於1994年創作的繪畫《從未了結》，亦引用藝術家寫於2014年的詩作《明天會再來》，回顧並致敬已故大師的藝術生涯與其自成一派的創意。

繪畫的文法

展覽的第一個單元著重介紹陳餘生作為藝術家以及教育家的理念。他在1989年卸任大東電報局全職後，全心投入藝術創作，亦與畫家周淑芬創辦文苑畫院教授繪畫。陳餘生結合自己在港大校外課程學到的藝術理論以及自身多年的經驗，發展出一套「排除派別，以保存個人發展為主軸的教授繪畫方法」。他的教學大綱在2008年出版成《繪畫十講》，亦被他精簡地概括成「前後虛實明暗形色質感十五字真言」——這是他持續在創作生涯裡身教言傳的一套繪畫文法。這個單元展示從1960年代至2000年代的作品，以陳餘生的繪畫文法為脈絡，探討其繪畫理念以及為觀眾提供拆解其抽象作品的不同脈絡。

天真與經驗之符號

陳餘生相信抽象繪畫的核心是情感表達。無論日常物件、自然景物、音樂、電影或是文學，任何能夠觸動情感的事物都為陳餘生提供靈感和素材。雖然藝術家的抽象視覺語言不拘一格、變化豐富，但某些常見的造型亦逐漸形成他獨特的個人意象，例如尖牙、眼睛、窗戶等。這個單元探討藝術家從原住民及傳統藝術提取的靈感，以及他畫筆下不同的象徵性符號如何回應時代變遷、反映人世間陰晴圓缺，驅使我們觀照自己最深層的欲望與恐懼。

流連色彩之間

在1990年，陳餘生獲香港藝術家聯盟及香港市政局頒發「香港藝術家年獎」，為他成熟而豐富的藝術階段拉開序幕。除了倚重象徵式符號的作品，他也創作了很多探索視覺感知的作品。這個單元展示從1990年代至2000年代的作品，探討陳餘生如何運用色彩層次去塑造極具想象力的曖昧空間，同時亦配以藝術家鮮少被注意的詩詞創作，反映他對時事、生命根源以及宇宙意義的看法。

由畫布到屏幕

在80歲的時候，陳餘生曾感覺自己在以來借來的時間而過活，因為身體在歷經心臟病、中風以及肺癌後已大不如前。不過，他面對種種難關依然沒有失去對生命的熱枕，將自身的經歷都化作創作靈感。在1998年中風後，他開始透過在電腦上玩微軟接龍遊戲，重新訓練眼手協調。不久後，他便熟練到能夠每每打敗電腦，倍感無趣又將心思轉向另一程式——微軟小畫家，一個以像素（pixel）構成和處理影像的柵格圖（raster graphics）編輯程式。陳餘生之後又在2001年患上肺癌，在割除四分之一的肺部後無法再長時間站立作畫，便轉向全面使用小畫家創作。這個單元以大型投影展示多幅從未展出的數碼繪畫，探討小畫家如何為陳餘生提供了新的靈感以及挑戰，讓他在數碼世界重新演繹自己的繪畫文法。

陳餘生罕有地擁有兩段成功的事業——第一段在通訊工程，而他更於1985年1985年獲英女王伊莉莎白二世授予大英帝國最優秀勳章（MBE），表揚其促進中港兩地電信聯繫及達成聯營協議方面的成就；第二段則是在藝術創作，在2013年獲香港特別行政區政府頒發銅紫荊獎，以表揚其藝術造詣以及對本地藝術教育的貢獻。藉著藝術家自2020年逝世四週年，本展覽由客席策展人黃熙婷、助理策展人Hain Yoon以及展覽顧問周淑芬聯合策劃，呈獻超過100件寶貴作品及其他文獻資料，以紀念這位標新立異的本地藝術奇才。

Public Education Programs

22 June, 27 July, 31 August, 28 September, 2024
3:00pm – 4:30pm

Capturing Gaylord Chan’s exuberant spirit and wit, this monthly salon series inspired by the late artist’s Cantonese nickname brings together art practitioners, writers, and students and friends of Chan to discuss different aspects of the late painter’s artwork, artistic community, and his lasting impact on local art history.

陳餘生為人鬼馬風趣，從不充當大師，反倒自稱「雞笠」。在展期間，「雞派沙龍」每月一聚，邀請各路藝術家、作家以及陳餘生的學生好友，一同探討其藝術創作、社交群體以及對於本地藝術史的深遠影響。

Registration報名: https://forms.gle/hBrHwJebe4dZPjQT6

Opening Salon: Those Days at CCAA | 文苑的那些年

22 June 2024
3:00 – 4:00pm

Language: Cantonese
語言：廣東話

Speakers: Joyce Hei-ting Wong and Josephine Chow Suk Fan
講者: 黃熙婷及周淑芬

Guest curator Joyce Hei-ting Wong will be joined by exhibition consultant and artist estate representative Josephine Chow Suk Fan to discuss the process of organizing this exhibition as well as Chan’s art practice and teaching.

客席策展人黃熙婷與展覽顧問周淑芬將一同分享籌備展覽幕後過程，以及深入討論陳餘生的藝術與教學。

Salon 2: Catalogue Book Launch | 展覽圖錄發佈座談

27 July 2024
3:00 – 4:00pm

Language: English
語言：英語

Speakers: Anthony Yung, Ian Findlay-Brown and Joyce Hei-ting Wong

講者: 翁子健, 房義安及黃熙婷

Catalogue contributors Anthony Yung, Senior Research, Asia Art Archive and Ian Findlay-Brown, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, will be joined by guest curator Joyce Hei-ting Wong to discuss their research on Chan and approaches to understanding the late painter’s artworks.

展覽圖錄撰稿人翁子健（亞洲藝術文獻庫資深研究員）及房義安（英國皇家藝術學會會員）將與客席策展人黃熙婷討論各自有關陳餘生的研究及詮釋其藝術的不同方式。

Salon: To Crit or Not To Crit | 再現「彈畫會」

31 August 2024
3:00 – 4:00pm

Language: Cantonese
語言：廣東話

Speakers: Amy Tang, Bouie Choi, Jeremy Ip and Joyce Hei-ting Wong
講者: 鄧穎姸, 蔡鈺娟,葉偉靖及黃熙婷

Artists Amy Tang, Bouie Choi, and Jeremy Ip will be joined by guest curator Joyce Hei-ting Wong in an unconventional “crit session” to discuss the criteria of art critique once used by Chan and fellow members of the Hong Kong Visual Art Society, as well as the practice of painting in our contemporary context.

藝術家鄧穎姸、蔡鈺娟及葉偉靖將與客席策展人黃熙婷進行另類「彈畫會」，討論陳餘生與香港視覺藝術協會曾採用的藝評準則，以及繪畫的當代境況。

Closing Salon: Gaylord & Friends | 雞派同樂會

28 September 2024
3:00 – 4:00pm

Language: Cantonese
語言：廣東話

Speakers: Tsong-zung Chang, Professor Cheng Yin Cheong and Joyce Hei-ting Wong
講者: 張頌仁, 鄭燕祥博士及黃熙婷

Long time friends of the artist Tsong-zung Chang, founder of Hanart TZ Gallery and Professor Cheng Yin Cheong, Emeritus Professor (Education) of The Education University of Hong Kong will be joined by guest curator Joyce Hei-ting Wong to discuss the friendships that Chan formed with members in the local art circle and the mutual inspiration they offered one another.

陳餘生的「老友」張頌仁（漢雅軒創辦人）及鄭燕祥博士（香港教育大學榮休教授）將與客席策展人黃熙婷討論陳餘生與不同藝術友人之間的相互啟發。

Salon Chicken Pie catered by: