As a seasoned veteran, Leung likes to divide his artistic life into two phases and label them respectively as the "cause" and the "effects" of his practice. The exhibition title in Chinese translates as "Fifty Years of Cause and Effects". According to the 69-year-old, the first phase happened before 2000.

In the three decades leading up to that time, Leung trained in ink painting and graphic design, worked a number of day jobs (including making window displays), taught design between 1975 and 1990 at the Hong Kong Polytechnic, and created artworks in media that included printmaking, sculpture and oil painting.

A practitioner of the Western art model in the early days, before becoming a key figure of Hong Kong's New Chinese Ink Painting movement, Leung only decided to focus on Chinese art in the mid-1980s. But while the works from the "effects" phase of his career may look like conventional ink paintings from afar, viewers familiar with the tradition will spot Leung's subversive elements.

Heavily influenced by his design background, Leung uses broken lines and objects that lack colour in his recent ink paintings, alongside seemingly incongruous geometric forms that evoke urban architecture. Another modern twist has the artist ditching the eye-level perspective and adopting a panoramic view, seen from a height.

"What if we're looking at the landscape from a plane? This point of view didn't exist for people in the past," he says, before agreeing with my suggestion that the geometric lines give an impression of the city.

It certainly looks like Leung's work has found the balance between mastering an old tradition and riling conservatives with a recklessly innovative touch. He says, "I even visit [contemporary art] shows, like documenta, every few years. I take in everything."

At his latest show, Leung's groundbreaking work is best exemplified by , a one-metre tall, 360-degree landscape painting that has a circumference of 33 metres. The original scroll is on display at Hanart Square, while the digitised, and considerably magnified, version is shown in City University's Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre as an immersive projection installation.

"The characteristic of this exhibition is that every painting stands on its own," says Leung. "It's not like other shows where you look at 100 paintings, and there's no difference from looking at just one. That's not how I perceive the idea of a unified style. My brush stroke is from traditional Chinese culture — it forms the backbone of my practice and I can't get away from that — but I also want to take my exploration further."