At my first
glance in sculptor Lee CHIN FAI’s Studio in Fo Tan, I could not tell if I am in the
world of metal. Most pieces of his work are made up of metal
and designed to have shape of fluid, set on the floor or hung on the walls and from the ceiling. Though with the features of metal, being cold, strong and stiff,
the fluidity of water are still displayed clearly. These sculptures share a common characteristic
that they can be considered as many twisted mirrors which make us see the reflection from
their smooth surface. Among these ‘weird mirrors’ , there are still
some solid art pieces, which are composited by unused and almost-dumped steel bars, motorbike
back sight-seeing mirror or made by other different media, such as rice
paper or marble. The
simplicity of Lee’s sculpture prompts me to find out what messages are beneath
them.
Lee is a devoted sculptor, currently living and working in Hong Kong. His works
are collected by Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong Heritage Museum, MTR
Corporation, Housing Department and any other Corporate and private collectors.
Lee’s works are closely relating to water, cloud, nature and landscape, not
only decorating our boring city but also forming a city landscape.
The ‘metallic water’ is often seen in his previous art pieces. He explained
that one of the reason to choose ‘water’ as the prototype was because of its characteristics
of reflection. Water can be seen as a mirror. We may laugh when we see
ourselves through it. Our reflections are changing while the shape of water is changing.
However, no matter how our reflections change, we could still find ourselves from
them. People in city are striving to live and work but leave less time to realize
their inner part. That is what Lee hopes to tell us through his works.
As mentioned above, Lee’s inspiration is from nature and landscape. Apart from
the ‘water’ art works, he combines the elements of ‘landscape’ and ‘city’ in
his other pieces, reminding people despite they are in a modern city, they can
still see the city as the landscape via their imagination. To represent this
concept, Lee uses vehicles as the shape of his work with the combination of
other materials.
On one side of walls in the studio, there was a white paper car, as if
floating in the air. I had doubted that it was a cloud. Based on Lee’s
explanation, it is really a cloud in a shape of car. Then he guided me to think
why a cloud would exist- due to the evaporation and condensation of water! This
makes me think of that something vanish in one world then are reborn in another
world. The process is similar to how water evaporates on the ground and transforms
to be a cloud, representing the circle of life. But why it is in a car shape?
Lee left this question to me. I guess it may just be a car in the city of
heaven. In that city, there may be someone like me imagining how our human city
is like.
Via Lee’s works, he tells us his philosophy of different aspects. But I know,
even now you and I are standing in front of his works, listening what he says,
from different perspectives we have, the philosophy the art works express to us
can be much different. This is what art brings to us.
