Kurt Chan’s solo show “Why Not Start Again?” at Giant Year Gallery in Hong Kong was a collection of new drawings, sculptures and a mixed-media installation that reinterpreted traditional art practices in novel ways. Chan joined the faculty of Fine Arts department at the Chinese University in Hong Kong in 1989, but has recently retired from his tenure at the institution. Having earned his BFA at the same university in the early 1980s, he then moved to Michigan to hone his skills as a painter in an MFA program at the Cranbrook Academy of Art before returning to Hong Kong for a professorship. Although primarily trained in Western art practices, his most recent works reveal a fascination in the formal qualities of traditional Chinese calligraphy. In his curatorial statement, the artist wrote that during this turning point in his life, he chose to use this exhibition as an opportunity to “look back.” The exhibition marked an end to Chan’s career as an academic, as well as the beginning of his subsequent journey to practice what he had preached for nearly three decades.

Upon entering the gallery, one noticed that the show was divided into two sections. Leaning against the gallery walls, on clean white ledges, were calligraphic “paintings” that one assumed were ink drawings on rice paper. Upon closer inspection, it became clearer that the works were in fact digital drawings that perfectly mimicked the aesthetics of Chinese calligraphy, seamlessly combining soft feathering strokes with the artist’s darker, bolder lines. Within these modestly sized drawings lay idiosyncrasies—a face whose markings looked more like those of an intaglio scraper than a brush; impossible watermarks that had erased large sections of what was drawn underneath. These playful compositions were even iconoclastic in content; closer studies led to the realization that although the calligraphy resembled Chinese characters, they were mostly nonsensical abstractions whose compostions could only be deciphered in segements. In Chan’s own words, he aimed to deconstruct the connection between the “written form” and “designated meaning” in Chinese culture, using the Chinese brush as an abstrct artistic tool to explore how contemporary art can help us see traditional legacy with new eyes.