Stephen Wong Chun Hei:
Maclehose Trail
A Solo Exhibition
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From 10 - 31 March, Bonhams Hong Kong presents Stephen Wong Chun Hei: MacLehose Trail, a selling exhibition of a new landscape series by the critically-acclaimed Hong Kong artist.
The exhibition will showcase 48 works depicting the picturesque scenery of Hong Kong's landmark long-distance hiking trail. The acrylic paintings and works on paper mark the first time Stephen Wong has chronicled his journeys along the MacLehose Trail as a standalone series. An avid hiker, Wong sketched the sights en route and subsequently re-envisioned them on canvas; the volatility of memory constitutes the most personal manifestation of the artist’s unique expression.
MacLehose Trail Section 1, 2022. Acrylic on canvas 150 x 150cm (59 x 59in). Price on request
MacLehose Trail Section 1, 2022. Acrylic on canvas 150 x 150cm (59 x 59in). Price on request
Stephen Wong
Hong Kong-based Stephen Wong Chun Hei graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Department of Fine Arts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2008.
Natural landscapes are the key motif throughout Wong’s paintings. Combining intuitive imagination and visual experience from his long hiking trips, his works emit a mysterious sense of being familiar yet uncannily out of place, prompting viewers to ponder the harmony and conflict between human and nature.
His recent solo exhibitions include Indoor Travelling with Objects (2021), Indoor Hundred Islands (2021), and A Grand Tour in Google Earth (2021), as well as the duo show Beside the City (2019) alongside artist Yeung Hok Tak.
The MacLehose Trail
Opened in 1979, The MacLehose Trail is named after Murray MacLehose, Baron MacLehose of Beoch, the 25th Governor of Hong Kong. The Trail spans from East to West of the New Territories; starting in Sai Kung, it passes through eight country parks before winding its way to Tuen Mun in the western end. The trail passes through a variety of natural scenery, from beaches and mountains to reservoirs and ancient paths. In 2016, it was recognised on National Geographic’s list of the world’s 20 dream trails.
Stephen Wong Chun Hei
Stephen Wong Chun Hei
The Exhibition
The solo exhibition begins on 10 March 2022 in our Hong Kong gallery. The exhibition is for private viewings only; please contact our specialists to schedule a viewing.
Opening Times
Monday to Friday
10 - 31 March 2022
10am - 6pm
Location
Bonhams Hong Kong Gallery
20/F
One Pacific Place
Admiralty
"Hiking for me is a bit like drawing,
because in my mind’s eye
I’m continuously reconstructing the scene."
Bonhams Magazine
Eternal space
Stephen Wong Chun Hei’s visionary art turns nature into something phantasmagorical. Ophelia Lai meets the Hong Kong painter whose work transforms reality.
In Stephen Wong Chun Hei’s six-metre-wide triptych of Jat’s Incline (2020), depicting a popular hiking route in Hong Kong, trees with peacock-hued leaves and magenta trunks line a path that extends along the foreground. Rising majestically in the central panel’s background is the Lion Rock summit, brightly rendered in peach, ochre, and turquoise. Here, one of the city’s iconic landmarks is turned dazzlingly strange.
Seldom exhibited abroad, Wong’s landscape paintings have won critical and commercial acclaim in his native Hong Kong for their meticulous compositions and phantasmagorical palettes. An avid hiker, Wong assiduously documents Hong Kong’s many country parks and coastal areas, sketching the sights en-route and subsequently re-envisioning them on canvas.
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