Oil paintings enriched by mystery outside frame

By Victoria Gail-White
Special to The Advertiser

•	'Colored Perceptions': Ka-Ning Fong 10:00 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays 10:00 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturdays Through March 19 bibelot gallery 738-0368

In this new series of seven oil paintings, his love of the dark comes to light.

"Everything shifts at night," says Fong, "and takes on a different character because the artificial light colors give off a different sensation, more psychological. I feel a certain affection for it, even though it is not necessarily a nice experience. There is an inherent mystery in it that makes people feel uneasy."

The titles for these seven oil paintings are loosely based on movie titles and all of the images are based on his European travels, with one exception — "The Sting" (a scene of the corner at Dillingham and Beretania). In this street scene, the mercury lamps cast a yellow/orange glow, the fluorescent lamps exude a greenish light, and a common underground parking lot, the street level and a stairway leading to an upper level become an inner-city allegory for hell, Earth and heaven. Fong enriches this remarkable work by using a complementary color scheme, shifting the color values with the different sources of light. The railings give the work a clear and pleasing linear path for the eye to follow and enhance the pictorial unity.

"Lost in Transition" comes from photo images of two street corners (streets apart), spliced together. The red/orange storefront and neon light scene on the right side of the painting and the gray/green scene of a woman reading a guidebook on the left open our imaginations up to what might be around the corner.

"Anything good or bad could happen," says Fong. "Part of the dynamic of these compositions is outside of the frame, in the viewer's narrative. We might wonder what's going on just beyond where the canvas ends. This gives the illusion of a larger area with more happening than what is actually in the frame."

What astounds Fong is the ill fates that often befall the things he paints.

Many times, the places he chooses to paint get torn down or closed. It would seem that his desire to paint them is an intuitive drive to prevent them from slipping into total obscurity.

Fong has also included in the exhibit a series of fifteen pastel and pencil figure drawings.

This work stems from Yoko Radke's Sunday-morning figure drawing sessions with live models at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa. He has been attending these sessions for more than a decade.

In these figurative works it is not night-ights that are glowing, but the sensuous qualities of skin tone. Fong works primarily on darker papers and illuminates the curves of the models with complementary pastel colors. The orange outlines of a shoulder, hip or breast come to life on the blue paper background.

Fong is a lecturer in drawing and painting at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, as well as Honolulu Community College and Windward Community College.

His work has won many awards and has been collected by The Advertiser, the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, the Mayor's Office on Culture and the Arts and the Honolulu Academy of Arts.