Tong Chong is one of my favourite Macao artists. I like his works not only because of the joy they exude, but also because I admire the ingenuity in his craftsmanship in the pursuit of simplicity. Tong Chong was born in Fuzhou, Fujian Province in 1977. He moved to Macau in 1984. At the age of 13, he returned to Fuzhou to study painting at the School of Arts and Crafts. One year later, he began to study in modern painting courses in the School of Visual Arts at the Macao Polytechnic Institute. From the year 1991 to 1996, he was studying painting under the guidance of Mr. Mio Pang Fei.
Having a special affinity in primitivism and folk art, Tong Chong often says that he is not very talented in verbal expressions. But one can see that his mastery of totem art is like a duck takes to water. The term totem is derived from the North American Ojibwe language, in which it means "his relative" or "his clan". It is a symbol or image creation that combines social realities and imaginations. The totem logos are related to the origin of written Chinese characters in Chinese history. They were the earliest social organisation signs and symbols. For example, Chinese people’s imagination and worship of dragons are conveyed through totems. The primitive tribe's worship of nature is the basis for totem art. The use of totems to explain myths, ancient classical records and folk customs was the earliest cultural phenomenon in human history.
Tong Chong's exploration of totems has never stopped since he was only a teenager. His painting style never drifted to other mainstreams culture, he has dedicated himself to exploring the plasticity of turning reality into patterns and images, which also led him to the path of sculpture art. The current exhibition of Tong Chong, organised by the Macau Art For All Society, is the first part of the exhibition series of "Perpetual Impermanence" for established artists in the annual planning of 2020. The exhibition "Somniloquence"- Works by Tong Chong is his 11th solo exhibition, showcasing 22 pieces of his latest and selected artworks, including 5 sculptures, and the rest are paintings.
This series of latest artworks is the artist's exploration in colours during the past two to three years. Tong Chong, who has turned over forty years old now, said that there was an absence of bright colours in his paintings previously. But as he entered middle age, he seemed to reach a new comprehension of colours in his works. He has chosen to use Chinese traditional painting pigments, because the colours of plants and mineral pigments are more natural, and the use of colours is combined with traditional paper-cutting art. Using bamboo fibre paper as a medium, which provides more advantages in colouring and preservation, he paints, does colouring and collage in the process.
Tong Chong’s artistic approach demands great attention, but it appears to be free and easy. Whenever he has time, he cuts up different shapes from paper, and then have them classified into different categories, and uses the cut images to create, paste and then paint upon it. The process of pasting and painting involves composition and placement. Technical experimentation took the most part of a year, during which Tong Chong explored the kind of paper, glue, paint (brands and types), etc. for the current methods to appear. But also as important as the technical process, is Tong Chong’s emphasis on the mental state of artistic creation. If he is not in a suitable mental state, he will not paint. He said that the mental state referred to here is related to psychology and subconsciousness.
Looking at Tong Zhong's works, it reminds me of "Somniloquence", (Sleep Talking) which are like words spoken in dreams.
This latest series of artworks is an extension of the "Blossom” series in which more realistic and recognisable paper-cut forms become more abstract imagery. The artist observes the current state of affairs of our world in which truth and falsehood is creating confusions, and turns it into abstract and vague forms, allowing the audience to interpret them by themselves, producing different understandings and feelings. Tong Chong considers the relationship between human society and the natural biological world in the context of social development. At first glance, those strangely shaped "creatures" appear to be released from fossils locked since the ancient times, they are now liberated to tell humanity that we have never been the sole masters of the world. The evolution of nature, inextricably linked, entails in the cycles of causes and effects. How can one wakes up from the sleep and finds out the truth of materialistic pursuits without spiritual balance only creates ever greater imbalance.
After meditation, I looked online into the meaning of Somniloquence and discovered the poem "Fan" by the poet Li Shi in the Song Dynasty: "History is but a somniloquence. Victory cried upon the chess board game. The drunken orangutang clogged. The dragon wakes up to remember its pearl." In the dream of humanity, our cry for success is like drunk monkeys putting on shoes and become a fowl. In the legend told by Zhuang Zi the son of a poor family by the river went to steal the pearl under the chin of the black dragon at the bottom of the lake. But once the dragon woke up, it remembered the pearl which went missing, and it is bound to fight back. At the end, those who took without measure will inevitably be destroyed.
This dreamy “Somniloquence”, as sweet as it seems, is indeed the alarming words of an artist.
Curator
Alice Kok