Michelle Kuen Suet FUNG

Biography

Michelle Kuen Suet Fung sees herself belong to a generation of young Westernized Hong Kong artists who work in the Pop Surrealist genre. Michelle draws on references from popular subcultures such as fairy tales, children's picture books and the Otaku (a Japanese term that refers to socially awkward introverts obsessed with the fantasy world of Anime and Manga.) Like many Otakus, the artist has a deep bond with her childhood memories. At the beginning of her life, the artist's parents thought the little girl would grow up to be an actor. When the toddler began her mural projects in the living room, a suspicion began to bud—this little person may have a different calling. Indeed, Michelle has never ceased to make art since then.

Currently, Michelle continues to work on her well-loved Into the Woods ink and colour pencil drawings where the trees—roots and branches and all—float in a void space much like the way jellyfish drift in the ocean. She has recently finished a body of 26 oil and ink paintings on wood I Don't Know if You Know How Much I Love You where she flirts with the primal obsessions signified by the various animal motifs in the image (lizard in L for Loss, octopus in O for On My Own…) and the romantic sensitivity represented by the delicate-looking young girls in the context of an "English alphabet picture book" which may not be so suitable for children.

Michelle's narrative style that assembles the cute and the grotesque in an uneasy tableau dates back to 2005, when the book Dreadful in Truth by Kiryu Misao inspired the artist to create a series of intricate and bizarre drawings that explored the difficult issues in fairy tales and how these issues resonate in today's world. This project was a pivotal point that defined her artistic direction. In 2009, Philippa Mennell, writing for Ricepaper Magazine, described her work as "alluring and jarring".

In March 2010, Michelle was awarded an artist residency at Canada's prestigious Banff Centre. Working intensively for 2 weeks with other international artists, Michelle refined her painting skills, and discovered exciting ways to layer imagery, in additional to experimenting with bringing a sculptural component to her work by shaping the panels. Having lived in Vancouver for almost 2 decades, the artist returned to her place of birth Hong Kong to pursue her art career in summer 2011.

The artist's upcoming exhibition includes Art Edition in Seoul, Korea, and recent xhibitions includes Asia Top Gallery Hotel Air Fair at Hyatt Hotel in Hong Kong, 2010 and By Land, Sea and Air at Compound Gallery in Portland, Oregon, USA, 2010. The artist's practice has been featured in the media numerous times. Her works are in international private collections, and The Canada Council Art Bank.

Artist's statement

Into the Woods

In Michelle Kuen Suet Fung's ink and color pencil drawings Into the Woods, a tree, some imaginary and some realistic, hover on the quiet 15x22" white watercolour paper. The drawings depict the entire tree from the tip of its branches to its long deep roots. The dry rough tree trunk and the soft translucent petals are communicated through the delicate lines by ink, and accentuated by the sometimes almost monochromatic and sometimes vivid rendering. At times, there is a big-eyed girl swinging on a noose; other times, an unidentifiable figure points his/her bottom skyward, half hidden by the tree. There is no
horizon line to stabilize one's vision. The reward is a gentle world of hues, fleeting moments and poetry.

In "the World's Greatest Painting", William Kloss describes the visual structure "where the tree grows in the centre of the garden" is a symbol of order and idealized world; outside this world lies a world of harsh and imperfect reality. This "tree of life" appeared most importantly as the Garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis. In the series Into the Woods, the artist's trees depart the imperfect world into a white space where the passage of time seems to suspend yet accentuated through the details.

A tender elusive sadness permeates the empty space around the trees. The trees underline time and mortality, through the baby and the empty swing, the rustling foliage and the beautiful cherry blossoms. The sensory and tactile details reveal the artist's sensitivity. One can almost hear the fluttering butterflies, smell the whiff of floral fragrance, and feel the hard scratchy tree bark. The concept mono no aware, the Japanese sadness for impermanence, is sensitively expressed in the drawings Into the Woods through the exquisitely-executed trees. The barren branches in many of the drawings highlight the fleeting beauty of youthful maids, romantic blossoms and intricate butterflies in others. The unpretentious narrative quietly tells the inevitable tales about the passage of time in a caring if sometimes melancholy tone. The artist has also chosen paper, a fragile yet delicate material for markmaking, as the drawing surface for this body of works, much like the quiet understated aesthetics of the trees.

In Michelle Kuen Suet Fung's quasi botanical illustrations, dark humour illuminates through childlike figures lingering around the trees, while the trees—roots and branches and all—float in a void space much like the way jellyfish drift in the ocean.