In today’s world of digital images and icons, reality tv and Wii-games, our busy Hong Kong lives seem very far removed from the world of sages and scholars. Our appreciation for material, color and skills has deteriorated and our current idea of thought and contemplation is doing an hour of yoga squeezed in with 60 people in a room somewhere between leaving the office and shopping just before we go home.

The same attitudes are reflected in the art world so therefore its not surprising Koon Wai Bong finds himself quite lonely concentrating on a life-long process of mastering the skills of brushsrokes and ink. While most of his classmates were veering off into Western ideas and media, Koon was inspired by old tradition and made his ambition not just to master these techniques but to find a way to express contemporary living.

As per Prof. Harold Mak, Chairman of the Department of Fine Arts at the CUHK:

“In a world that is increasingly globalized, many artists are preoccupied with shaping their art to the liking of the international community, at the expense of their own national and cultural identity, whether or not aware of it. Koon’s anchoring of his art to the tradition while exploring for modernity will, I am sure, lead to a rewarding synthesis of tradition brush and ink with modern art.”
Koon’s works can be mainly categorized into ink landscape and fine-brush insects but are never directly painted from nature. Instead he emphasizes the impression and sensation of the mind and emotions: “its is only through a process of assimilation and digestion by the mind that what is ultimately produced is one’s own and essential nature.”

Koon Wai Bong received his B.A. and M.F.A. from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is teaching in the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University, and studying the D.F.A. programme in Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

His works were selected to the 10th and 11th National Exhibition of Arts in 2004 and 2009 respectively, the 2nd Beijing International Art Biennial in 2005, "Beyond the Surface: Chinese Abstract Art" in 2008, the Contemporary Hong Kong Art Biennial in 1996, 1998 and 2005, joined Hong Kong's "Water.Ink.Colour: Exhibition of Chinese Paintings" in 2009 and held "The Dao Revealed through Brush & Ink: Chinese Paintings and Works of Calligraphy & Seal Engraving" by Wan Qingli, Daniel Lau Chak Kwong and Koon Wai Bong in 2009.

His name was included in the /Yearbook of Chinese Cultural Heritage /in 2007. Furthermore, the Hong Kong Arts Development Council awarded him the Rising Artist Award in 2003, and his works recieved the Merit award from the 10th National Exhibition of Arts in 2004 and short-listed in Hong Kong Arts Centre 30th Anniversary Award in 2008 and housed by museums and private collections in Hong Kong and Mainland China.