FABULOUS 'LIVE PAINTING' BY EMMA HACK IN THE CAT STREET GALLERY

SHE'S ALIVE!

...ISN'T SHE...?

I MEAN, HONESTLY.

HYPERACTIVE WITH GALLERY MANAGER, TANYA BENNETT
(LOVE HER TOP; MAKES ME WANNA BE A SPIDER IN MY NEXT LIFE.)

One of the things I love about living in Sheung Wan is its proximity to cool places that have cool people inside them, who do cool things. On the one end you've got Natalie Leung and the achingly hip SQUARE STREET design collective; on the other end there's Max Poelnitz and the hobolicious PoHo Bazaar hippies.

I was on my way home tonight when I saw henna tattoo artist, Sara Mush, waving excitedly at me from inside Cat Street Gallery.

"Thanks for voting," Sara enthused, "I won The Big Henna Contest!!!" The competition was organized by California-based Siren Song Productions as part of a campaign for the 203 Henna Intensive & Retreat in Wrightwood.

"AWESOME!!!" I gushed back. Sara works her butt off, promoting henna art in Hong Kong. She networks like crazy, seems to be at every event I attend, and is a tireless promoter on social media. A nu-age henna warrior princess!

There were a couple of girls hovering over Sara, so I thought I'd give them a chance to jump in - when I thought I saw one of the sculptures move... I moved closer - and I saw, it was a waif, painted completely in gold. All that gilded gold-ness instantly brought back visions of the Prometheus sculpture at Rockefeller Center, but this one is trompe l'oeil personified - literally!!! I mean, it's a person - a waif! My mind was reeling every which way as I stared aghast at the girl... What if she needed to pee?

"Work started on her at 11am," a leggy brunette behind me shared. "And we have just finished." It was 7pm.

"James," I thrust my right hand out. "I wouldn't have had the patience to sit for as long as she did. I'd die of boredom. Did you do her?"

"Tanya," she shook my hand. "No, I didn't do her; she did," Tanya gestured to a woman surrounded by well-wishers. "I manage the gallery."

"Wow," I whistled, "I just gotta have a photo..."

I  was as fascinated with the work of art as I was with the gallery manager who, with her gorgeous curls and open visage, looked like a Botticelli.



EMMA HACK TROMPE L'OEIL
August 29 - September 22
Cat Street Gallery
222 Hollywood Road
Hong Kong

FAREWELL TO A BOY NAMED CLAREN

ROCK STAR

PORN STAR

SEX SYMBOL

APOLOGETIC BAD BOY-WANNABE

HE SAYS:
Please understand that I'm doing this because I need to get laid on Valentine's Day. LMAO.

ART DIRECTOR

JUNKYARDKID

CARTOON HERO

26, EX-BOYFRIEND MATERIAL,
HE SAYS.

I called him CHiP.

I guess it could have simply been "Chip," but he was an artist. There just had to be some idiosyncrasy to how I spelled my term of endearment for him.

CHiP was short for "chipmunk." His pocket-sized build, joyful presence and irresistible will to make me laugh reminded me a lot of Alvin and the Chipmunks.

And he called me GoOf - one letter short of "Goofy," in reference to my large, clumsy feet that would inadvertently step on his much smaller ones whenever we held hands while walking (all the time).

"Pneumonia," Kris, his best friend, messaged me on Facebook. " He's been in the hospital since last Wednesday. His sister told me he was getting better and then, all of a sudden, he couldn't breath. And then he was gone."

I was shell-shocked.

I last saw Claren in 2003, just before I started work on a TV talent competition and a soap opera. We broke up.

"He was much too gentle and beautiful and perfect a soul for me," I told Kris. "I loved him a lot. He was everything I ever wanted. I saw us getting old together - laughing. And I think that that scared me. We were both so young. I couldn't be sure until I was sure. Isn't that silly?"

"Claren Torres, 26, ex-boyfriend material," was his succinct description of himself on his blog. Even in death, he makes me laugh.

"Claren's such a cheat," Kris complained, with fondness. "He never turned 30."

"He'll be 19 forever," I said.

"In my memory," Kris reminisced, "we're both still 17."

Kris and Claren were like twins. Same age, same build, same boyish charm. One's darker, more brooding. The other one's an imp.

Kris relocated to the States several years ago, immediately following their graduation, methinks.

"I last saw him in 2007," he shared, "and only for, like, a few hours. I was in Manila only for two days. I asked his ate if I could have a pair of his pants. And I'll wear them when I go somewhere new. I guess at least kahit ganun lang, we can see places together..."

Boyfriends, especially at the age when Claren and I dated, are dispensable. mIRC was all the rage back then, and relationships came and went as quickly as you'd like for an EB to occur. But I can't even fathom the depth of Kris' loss. They were best friends. I understand the need to hang on to something - anything - as long as it wouldn't die and therefore remain an evergreen reminder of the one who once owned it.

What's perhaps funniest about my and Claren's brief relationship was the circumstance that brought us together. I dated his best friend, Kris.

Last night, I spent almost four hours making up for lost time. That's what happens with exes. You wanna be friends after you break up. And while you do make the effort initially (through some combination of guilt and determination), it's hard to keep it up. What I realized was, I missed out.

Claren's light shone even brighter - like the pop of his Canon's flash. Claren bathed his life in whimsical, colour-saturated imagery that married the character of Old Manila with his own need to express himself in ever-maturing ways through digital manipulation. By far, Claren's Flickr Photostream is the online profile that best represented him.

He called himself "Junkyardkid" - a collector of discarded objects and memories, because he finds pure, child-like joy in re-imagining these in ways we'd never see them otherwise.

He posted a photo of himself in the hospital, on his Facebook wall. His eyes looked rounder than the camera lenses' aperture must have been. He captioned it: Greetings from the hospital.

Up to his very last moments, he found a way to repurpose a junkyard of an experience - knocking on heaven's door - as something that clawed right back in a funny, ever-present way towards the living world.

Rest in peace, CHiP.

DUCKOLICISM

Duckzilla.

I saw the giant rubber duck five times whilst it was in Hong Kong. It got me every single time. It was awesome. It looked like it could easily crush the cruise ship docked on Ocean Terminal. Even Hong Kong's iconic skyscrapers looked like hapless matchsticks behind this ginormous sculpture.

I love rubber ducks; they remind us of a time when taking baths were not just functional but also fun.

But this sculpture - officially entitled Spreading Joy Around the World by Dutch conceptual artist Florentijn Hofman - swept over Hong Kong like Biebermania would sweep an arena of tweens at a Justin Bieber concert. Hofman himself was reportedly overwhelmed when the duck was greeted by a cheering crowd when it floated into Victoria Harbour. We elbowed for hours to capture the perfect smartphone pic. We braved crippling heat, sweltering humidity and even relentless rain to catch a sight of the duck in all its glory.

The duck also compelled many of us to open our wallets on unplanned shopping sprees in Tsim Sha Tsui's gleaming commercial temples. Crowd control was in strict enforcement outside Ocean Terminal. In order to take the perfect duck pic, you'd have to plunge into the sea of people being funneled into the shopping mall. It didn't matter if you didn't want to; it's futile to even attempt going against the current of duck worshipers. The sculpture inspired amongst us Hong Kongers a kind of fervor we have yet to accord a religious icon -  Beijing's benevolent hand, even less!

When the duck was deflated - sick with avian flu? - there was mass hysteria. We wept and wailed because we had taken a day off work just to see the most sacred testament to our wanton culture of consumerism! The sight of the duck lying on its side shook our beliefs to the core. We held vigil until it once again inflated and regained its reassuring girth. (We don't like skinny ducks.)

Being in the duck's presence gave me a taste of what Mecca must be like during Hajj. Surely, our duck worship mirrors the intensity of having 100 million Hindu pilgrims waiting to bathe in the Ganges during Kumbh Mela. Except this is Hong Kong, of course, so this "peaceful gathering" is maintained by a fragile understanding that everyone will get the perfect pic for Facebook or Weibo - as long as we all observe queuing etiquette. And as long as there's order, our very identity as Hong Kongers is preserved. Our beliefs are reinforced. We're enlightened!

I saw the duck five times.

I fell under its spell, too, although in my case I suspect it's because touching any rubber duck evokes naughtier adult pleasures, of late. The bigger, the better.

The duck is gone and life is back to "normal."

I know now, it takes a fool to define normalcy in this town.

THE TAO OF HYPER, WITH YUE MIN JUN

"He's one of the most important artists of our time," I rationalized. I had to convince myself that crossing the harbour for the opening event of Yue Min Jun's exhibit was worth it, even though the rain had completely soaked my sneakers and the bottom half of my jeans. The raindrops were coming down so hard, they shot through my umbrella. Useless.

Thank goodness an empty cab finally came by just as I was about ready to give up my hunger for art in order to satisfy my hunger for food. It was almost 2pm.

"The Tao of Laughter" was set to launch in front of the Star Ferry Terminal, just outside Harbour City. Of course when we got there, all we saw were monolithic bronze sculptures of Yue Min Jun's iconic laughing man. It seemed they were laughing at the absurdity of it all. This was billed as one of the most important art events of the year. Hong Kong, despite its wealth and unquenchable (speculative?) thirst for contemporary Chinese art, was powerless to stop simple rain.

The event had to be moved to a gallery inside the shopping mall. When we got there, there was no Yue Min Jun. There was only Carina Lau and what looked like a million reporters. What were we all there for, really? To see another Hong Kong celebrity?

Dejected - and wet and hungry, besides - I dragged my companions to the food court to eat bad Korean. "This soup must have been made from a beef bouillon cube and hot water," Charmaine frowned, pushing her noodles around with her chopsticks. Chris didn't even finish half his Korean bento. I finished all of mine; carbs made me feel good, at the very least. Scarlett was just happy she had eaten before we left the office.

"Let's pass by the gallery one more time, see if he's there..." I sighed. I had to make one final attempt to see my art idol.

What little hope I had evaporated as soon as we got back to the gallery. It was practically empty. I scanned its entire length... and lo and behold, there was Yue Min Jun in a corner, conducting an interview with two reporters. I couldn't take my camera out quickly enough.

Scarlett and Charmaine waved goodbye; they didn't want to miss the start of Lady Gaga's perfume launch. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Chris gesture that he also wanted to leave. I signed for him to wait a few more minutes; I was already queued up for a photo with the master.

As soon as his interviews were over, I shook his hand and introduced myself.

"I'm James," I said. "May I have a photo with you?"

I shoved my Canon onto the hands of the bewildered media rep, who was perhaps wondering why I didn't have my own crew.

CLICK.

"Xie xie," Yue Min Jun said, shaking my hand. A smile spread across his open face - pretty much a mirror of the identical pink men with wide mouths and hundreds of teeth, in his paintings.

And I was happy.

Carina Lau

So gay, I swear.

Three classics.

Yue Min Jun!!!

He likes stripes. Plus points.

Yue and Hy.

'THE TAO OF LAUGHTER' by Yue Min Jun
Gallery by the Harbour
Shop 207 Ocean Centre
Harbour City
Tsim Sha Tsui
Hong Kong