Oil and acrylic on canvas

60.7 × 50.9 cm. 23 7/8 x 20 in.

Signed in English and dated on upper right
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Asia

Various Experiences of Life in a Bottle
The Free Life of Ng Chung
Ng Chung was born in Hainan and accepted a comprehensive realistic painting training in the Print-making Department of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in the 1980s. He migrated to Hong Kong after graduating. He took Lan Kwai Fong as the center and pursued his career path in art of free creation for more than 20 years. He has always kept his paintings on the shelf in a low profile, yet his work earns recognition. His unique personality makes him stand out from the contemporary art community in Hong Kong.
After two decades, aside from the style of expressionism or surrealism, Ng Chung began focusing on the theme of "bottles". The anthropomorphic image traits are gradually revealed with his own deep interpretation of it. Blue Bottles is a new series that has been popular with collectors in recent years. In this work, the artist bids farewell to his style of high saturation or heavy colors before, instead, used more pure and harmonious colors to create a calming serenity. Although it is consistently repeated and the pigment scratched through as usual to break away from the inherent form of the bottle, the heavy atmosphere in his previous works was reduced . It created a visual feeling with enjoyment and humor in the blue and melancholic shades. Moreover, Ng Chung used the technique of "white remaining" less to highlight the junction of the bottle and the blue background. He also scraped the semi-enclosed line and frame as echo. Contoured bottles match each other interestingly; however, the different "material" of black and blue bottles symbolizes the different sides of humanity hidden in the crowd. It also echoes the mixed culture in Hong Kong while maintaining a free and casual atmosphere.
Ng Chung's eyes are always bright in the dark after finishing a few drinks. As the bottles in the painting, he sees the various experiences of life in the material thoroughly. He uses the material to describe humans and observes the material made by humans. He integrates hidden emotions that seem to have no intersections in a harmonious way, and depicts it in a way that is rarely seen by people.

Price estimate:
HKD: 100,000 - 200,000
USD: 12,800 - 25,600

Auction Result:
HKD: 129,800