A drawn line can turn a corner instantly. A neon tube must be heated and shaped to follow it. That difference between an image and its material form gives neon making its particular character. The craft has long supplied Hong Kong’s commercial streets with luminous lettering; contemporary makers are also exploring what the same skills can do in art.
From the journal
A New Hand at the Neon Flame
Hong Kong artist Chankalun brings traditional neon skills into contemporary collaborations and art.
A line has to become glass
Working across generations
The Hong Kong Tourism Board profiles artist Karen Chan, known as Chankalun, and her work with veteran neon maker Master Wong. Their 2019 My Light, My Hood project brought different generations into a shared process. An artist’s design and a maker’s control of glass had to meet in a piece that could actually be formed and illuminated.
Such collaboration gives transmission a practical setting. Knowledge is not passed on only through a finished sign. It is present in the judgement needed to translate a design into bends, joins and a workable arrangement of light.
More than a memory of shop signs
New work can carry the material into settings beyond its older commercial role. That does not remove the history of street lettering; it opens another way of working with it. The tube remains a physical object, shaped by a hand and activated by an electrical system, even when its message or setting changes.
Seen this way, Hong Kong neon has a story of new making alongside the collection and conservation of old signs. One concerns what survives from the street; the other concerns what skilled hands can still bring into being.