Rêverie lingers... Reality hovers at the edge—both distant yet near, a quiet record of the past, a tender echo of days gone by.
At the dawn of 2023, Koon Wai Bong journeyed alone to Taiwan from Hong Kong, leaving behind a land etched in memory and arriving in a place both unfamiliar and strangely known. To call it his second home felt like holding onto a rêverie, vivid yet elusive, real yet fleeting. To him, life began to unfold between two realms, and he drifted quietly between past and present. The past, once so immediate, now fades, as if each memory were gently being erased, stroke by stroke. And the present, this daily life he is learning to inhabit, feels like a rêverie recalled in passing, yet resisting solidity.
Rêverie: Koon Wai Bong Beneath a Solitary Canopy, will be taking place at Asia Art Center (Taipei) from August 24 to October 5, 2025, marking Koon's fourth solo exhibition at Asia Art Center since 2017 and his second in Taipei. The landscapes, forestscapes, individual words or phrases, each work in the exhibition records the intangible sense of presence he has experienced since 2022. Calligraphy serves as his autobiography of life in Taiwan; the bamboo paintings represent Koon's indelible past, while deliberately erased traces reflect his inner denial of that same past. The landscapes based on Taiwan's actual scenes mark his understanding and recognition of his new environment; however, the blurred images express Koon's rêverie-like, ambiguous feelings——affirming the present while harbouring uncertainty about reality.
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Koon Wai Bong, an ink artist based in Taiwan and Hong Kong, is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Fine Arts at National Taiwan Normal University. He previously taught for over fifteen years at the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University. Koon earned his Bachelor of Arts (1996) and Master of Arts in Fine Arts (2002) from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and his Doctor of Fine Arts (2012) from RMIT University, Australia. Koon's artistic oeuvre focuses on landscape painting and the aesthetics of ink painting, encompassing history, modern viewing experiences and perceptions of landscapes in ink art.
