"He Baili's Idyllic Hong Kong in Ink"
2006-03-24 until 2006-05-14
University Museum and Art Gallery, The University of Hong Kong
Pokfulam, , HK Hong Kong

The University Museum and Art Gallery is delighted to present an exhibition of ink paintings by He Baili (Ho Paklee), featuring his Hong Kong small-boat series spanning from the 1960s to the present. The exhibition will include about 80 landscapes and sketches. Baili was born in Guangzhou in 1945 and grew up in Hong Kong. He held his first one-man exhibition at the age of twenty-one and soon set up an art studio to teach. Trained in the naturalistic painting manner of the Lingnan School, he has developed his own unique style combining the ancient and the contemporary.

He is notable for his landscapes which are equally grand and spiritual, and has been presented in local and overseas exhibitions. His small-boat series is particularly individualistic, through which he expresses his own free spirit and deep emotional attachment to Hong Kong. He emphasizes drawing from life and his numerous trips to the local suburbs have inspired him to paint Hong Kong's landscapes, which he manifests diversely as layered wash and dotted mountains in the style of the Song painter Mi Fu (1051-1107), deltas formed from ink splashes, rocky coastlines in dry brush, or imaginative forests. His latest compositions are significant in their use of void and their mood of emptiness, representing his open and tranquil mind.

This is the first exhibition featuring He Baili's small-boat series exclusively, as a tribute to Hong Kong, where he has now returned after twenty years in Canada. A fully-illustrated catalogue will be available to accompany the exhibition.

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for Hong Kong

Other Important Exhibitions in Hong Kong