Cheung Chung-Chu

Cheung Chung-Chu (張中柱) is a senior Hong Kong painter, calligrapher, and printmaker, and one of the founding members of the Hong Kong Open Printshop (HKOP) — the city's first artist-run, non-profit open print studio, founded in 2000. His decades-long studio practice combines woodblock printing with etching, chine-collé, and traditional Chinese ink-wash and calligraphy methods, and his self-identification has consistently leaned toward the older traditions: although he has worked with etching and woodblock for decades, he describes himself as a calligrapher and ink-wash painter rather than a printmaker, treating the print as one tool among several rather than as a separate discipline.

Cheung's practice is distinctively rooted in classical Chinese poetic and aesthetic sources. His most-discussed body of woodblock work is a series inspired by classical Chinese poetry, anchored on Guan Ju, the opening poem of the Shī Jīng (Book of Songs) — one of the foundational texts of the Chinese poetic canon. Parts of the series combine woodblock printing with chine-collé or etching, and the printed sheets often retain traces of brushwork or calligraphic gesture that signal his ink-painting background.

He was an invited demonstrator at the 2017 International Mokuhanga Conference (IMC2017) in Honolulu, where he presented his Guan Ju series and discussed the relationship between Chinese calligraphic painting and woodblock printing. The International Mokuhanga Conferences, held roughly every three years, are among the principal global gatherings for contemporary woodblock practitioners.

His exhibition record stretches across multiple decades and continents. He has shown at the Southern Graphics Council International Conference in San Francisco (2014), the 11th International Biennial Print and Drawing Exhibition in Taiwan (2010), and the International Print Triennial Krakow in Poland (2009), among other international print events. He took first prize at Virtually/Reality, an international exchange of prints and digital images organized with Estampe Belgium, in 2003. His work is held in the collections of the Hong Kong Museum of Art and the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art, as well as the Sakimi Art Museum in Japan.

His work continues to be produced and shown through Hong Kong Open Printshop's contemporary print imprint, and the lyrical, fluid line of these prints connects his print practice to his calligraphic tradition.

Within Hong Kong's contemporary printmaking community Cheung occupies the role of a founding-generation senior figure — a member of the cohort that helped institutionalize contemporary printmaking in the city through Hong Kong Open Printshop — and his work has continued to bridge classical Chinese calligraphic tradition with the contemporary print process. HKOP, where his work continues to be produced, remains one of the city's central institutions for contemporary printmaking.