Helen Deng, Luo Songsong

    deng.heng@gmail.com

    MANY Chinese people have watched “From Beijing With Love”(国产零零漆), a Hong Kong comedy movie which is a parody of British spy series James Bond 007. Yet few have watched the movie as many times as Pak Sheung-chuen.

    The avant-garde Hong Kong artist played the movie incessantly at his home for a month, while documenting his fragmented inspirations from the movie and acting out some of the inspirations.

    Pak is sharing his inspirations from the movie with Shenzheners via an exhibition “Killing 3,000 — Reviewing the Movie from Pak Sheung-chuen’s Perspective” at He Xiangning Art Museum. The title “Killing 3,000” is a line in “From Beijing With Love.”

    Pak said he chose the movie because it was fun. “I had to watch it for a month and so I had to choose a movie that was not boring,” he said.

    His observations, however, are much more somber. His documentation of inspiration includes the sentence: “Plant vegetables near the tomb of your deceased relatives, and harvest the vegetables to feed your family.” The sentence occurred to him when he was watching the gunfight scenes of the movie.

    Some thoughts were turned into actions, with the help of volunteers. He would assign tasks to volunteers by e-mail at midnight each day. The volunteers, mostly university students, duly accomplished them, including some challenging jobs like touching a stranger for as long as possible. Pictures of volunteers accomplishing the tasks were also on display at the exhibition.

    Pak is in the habit of recording fragmented inspirations attained from his daily life. “I have been training myself by observing my surroundings from unique perspectives for 10 years,” he said.

    Through this exhibition he intends to express his understanding of urban life. “But I hope that the visitors to the exhibition would do some creative thinking of their own, not only about this movie, but also about life,” he said.

    Pak works as a photographer, painter, writer and conceptual artist, and the host of radio program “Artspiration” in Hong Kong. He is keenly devoted to experimenting with multimedia art creation. His works, with ideas derived from the people, events and things around him, are conceptual, poetic and humorous, and each is a deep thought about everyday life.

    Chief curator Feng Boyi said: “It is the era of post-modern art. Art is going to become more compressive. Under this tendency, modern artists decline to identify with the traditional style of art. They try to break the conventional way of cognition and appreciation to create and appreciate art. Pak Sheung-chuen has been practicing his belief in broadening the expression of art and communicating with the environment and his audience.”

    This exhibition runs till Aug. 19.

    Time: 10 a.m.-5 p.m., now through Aug. 19, closed Mondays

    Veune: He Xiangning Art Museum, Overseas Chinese Town, Nanshan District

    Metro: OCT Station (华侨城站), Exit C