Eston Tan - City of Lights

About

Tan has previously completed series of city scapes of other cities around the world, including Kuala Lumpur, Taipei, Singapore, Bangkok, Sidney, Perth, Budapest, Vienna, Salzburg, London... as well as parts of China and France.

Asked how Hong Kong differs from the other cities, Tan replies:

“Hong Kong is a highly charged, energetic and dynamic city. The streets abound with stimuli to all senses. Though small in size it is big enough to influence th e world on many aspects... Th e paintings are visual mementos of an aesth etic journey...”

In this Hong Kong series, Tan wants to capture the aspects that has impressed him the most - the fast pace, the intense energy, the vibrancy of colours and the multitude of lights. A keen photographer, Tan’s works also display a variety of interesting angles and some optical effects as sometimes seen through wide angle lenses. Tan snapshots places at
certain moments in time into paintings and invite viewers to pause and absorb the city - perhaps familiar to some and less to others.

Tan depicts scenes which one may have passed by so many times that they may be falling into the banality of daily life but which can be quite extraordinary in their own rights, whether standing in the middle of a busy cross-road, gazing down from tall buildings or maybe just contemplating the city’s spread of twinkling lights from the top of a mount. These are some of the scenes that Tan captures and transforms under his palette knife into visual feasts of lights, sumptuous textures and signature flickers, which to him symbolize “diving blessings from above”.