奇幻香港 | FANTASIES IN REALITY

肩負鳥籠的公園伯伯、叫賣蔬果的街市姨姨、呆望風景的地鐵少女,這些場景對我們而言是枯燥乏味的日常,在本地藝術家何博欣的畫中,卻微妙的形成了一齣又一齣的奇幻香港電影。

Old men in the park who carries bird cages on his shoulder, aunts in the street markets selling fruits and vegetables, and girls in the subway gawking at the scenery. These scenes are tedious and ordinary for us. In local painter and illustrator, Vivian Ho’s drawings, they have been subtly formed to be one and another fantasy Hong Kong movie.

I’ve heard that there’s a kind of bird without legs that can only fly and fly, and sleep in the wind when it is tired. The bird only lands once in its life… that’s when it dies.

何博欣的作品中多數都是香港的日常面貌,將平凡的路人置於其中心,再以平凡的街道作爲背景,同時結合超現實的元素,瞬間撒下了浪漫又迷離的氛圍,畫面雖耐人尋味,卻意外的和諧,令人難免會聯想到奇幻電影裏的場景。除了畫作本身帶有強烈的本土元素,她不少作品更是以廣東歌歌詞為題,完成整個意境,例如《你是千堆雪我是長街 怕日出一到彼此瓦解》是王菲〈郵差〉中的歌詞。

Most of Ho’s works showcase the everyday life of Hong Kong. She places ordinary passerby at the center, using ordinary streets as the background, and combining surreal elements to instantly cast a romantic and entrapped atmosphere. Although the pictures are intriguing, the unexpected harmony makes people inevitably relates them to the scenes that would appear in fantasy movies. In addition to the strong local elements in the paintings, many titles of her works are based on the lyrics of Cantonese songs in order to complete the entire artistic conception. For example, one of the drawings was named “You are a thousand piles of snow and I am the street. It is afraid that when the sun arrives, we will collapse as one” is the lyrics from Faye Wong’s “The Postman”.

在這其中,魚的蹤影在她的作品中幾乎是隨處可見,偶爾會有金魚會從大叔的紙杯探出頭來,一時又會有大魚在勤勞的裝修工人背後游走。因此不難發現何傅欣格外喜歡畫魚,她形容這種生物沒有什麽表情,卻生機勃勃。

On the other hand, the traces of fish can be seen in almost everywhere in her works. Occasionally, we can see that goldfishes probe their heads out of a man’s paper cup, and for a while there is a big fish swimming behind the industrious decorators. Therefore, it is not difficult to find that Ho is particularly fond of having fish in her drawings and illustrations. She described it as a creature that has no expression but is full of vitality.

現實處處荒謬虛假,不禁讓人懷疑到底自己身處的香港是否虛幻的國度,面對荒謬的人和事,人亦漸麻木。何博欣作品的不著邊際縱然不像話,但假設真親眼看到了有石斑魚在這片石屎森林之間匍匐爬行,想必當下大家也未必能夠即時反應。

The reality full of absurd and fakes, people can’t help but wonder whether Hong Kong is an illusory place. Facing absurd people and things, people are becoming more numb day after day. The irrelevant scenes from Ho’s works are apparently scientifically unreasonable, but if you really see a grouper crawling between this concrete forest, you may not be able to react immediately too.

她曾舉辦名為「Wish you were here.」的個人展覽,又有名為《Wish you were here》的畫作,似乎對這句話情有獨鍾。她提到:「(其意思是)無論變成點,都很想你在這裡,一齊看ridiculous的風景。」

She once held a solo exhibition titled “Wish you were here.” , and have another painting titled “Wish you were here”. It seems that she have a soft spot for this sentence. She mentioned that it means: no matter what happens, I really want you to be here and then we can view the ridiculous scenery together.

Wish you were here

More about 何博欣 Vivian Ho:
https://www.vivian-ho.com/
@vvvvnho

Photo courtesy of the artist​
Copyright © 2021 Vivian Ho何博欣. All rights reserved

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