The Sars outbreak may be wreaking havoc in our city, but the disease could be the catalyst that elevates the career of artist Marzo To. This week, To travels to London for a solo show at the School Of Oriental And African Studies' Brunei Gallery in London. He will be launching a new form of art that fuses digital technology with traditional rice-paper scrolls. 'My media has all changed, I've gone digital,' announces the eccentric artist as he settles at the Fringe Club bar and whips off his beret, shaking his messy mop of hair.
What makes the show even more exciting is its mission: to capture 'the modern life, politics and fleeting phenomena' that Hong Kong people face. The timing is impeccable.
To spent most of the 1980s studying at the College des Beaux Arts in Paris. Since his return to Hong Kong, he has developed into an emerging local talent who draws on classical Western techniques, creating gigantic oil paintings, some seven metres high.
Two months ago his style took a sudden twist. In early March he travelled to Guangzhou with a Leica camera. 'Just like a news reporter - which I wanted to be when I was a young boy, but I was too disorganised - I went to take pictures of people in masks,' To says.
The idea for the exhibition struck him as he admired ancient rice-paper scrolls in a Shenzhen museum on the way home: he could transpose his digital shots on to traditional scrolls. It began with a series of the masked city dwellers, and grew into a series of 40 scrolls covering a variety of themes.
He unravels the 'files', much to the delight of drinkers sitting nearby. Each scroll (50 per cent paper and 50 per cent silk) is fixed with a series of paintings and scanned collages. The colours are astounding and indicative of To's 20-year experimentation with oils. They glow with life. His signature gold-pigment brushwork sweeps lightly across images that appear to be a blend of photography and watercolour painting, but it's hard to be sure. Like a magician, he refuses to reveal his technique.