Into the Woods

Into the Woods (2024) is a small-format etching with drypoint produced through Hong Kong Open Printshop in an edition of ten. The title invokes a threshold — the act of entering a forested interior — and intaglio is well suited to such a subject: the etched line excels at the architecture of trunks, branches, and the recessive depth created by layered hatching, while drypoint adds the atmospheric softness of burr that registers diffuse light filtering through canopy. Wong typically works at modest plate dimensions, which compresses the wood's spatial depth into a near-tactile field of mark; the viewer reads density and weight of line as foreground and clearing rather than through Western linear perspective alone. Within Wong's wider practice, the piece sits among a group of 2024 prints — alongside The Black Dog and Its Shades and They Burnt and Fall — that traffic in interior, transitional, or psychological spaces. The forest as motif carries the freight of folklore and unease, and Wong's training at the Royal College of Art's M.A. Print programme is legible in the controlled, contemplative handling of both processes.