THE WASHROOMS ON the ground floor of City University's amenities building look exactly as they always have - off-white counters, simple sinks, oddly flamboyant potted plants. But early last month, a subtle transformation took place. With the help of the staff, artist Luke Ching Chin-wai swapped all of the light-bulbs between the men's and women's sides.
The point? That the light that has before only touched women will now land on men, and vice versa. Even the plants on each side will now be 'grown' by light from the opposite gender.
This mischievous switch seems a fitting introduction to Ching's work, which treats the whole world as a laboratory for off-kilter, strangely resonant experiments. Since he graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1998, Ching has consistently staged witty interventions, whether turning a storefront in Okinawa into a pinhole camera or teaching strangers on the streets of New York how to say 'I love you' in Cantonese. Ching's singular vision has made him a prize winner at the 2005 Hong Kong Biennial and one of the most influential local artists of his generation. He has just been appointed artist in residence at the Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre.
For Two or Three Things about Hong Kong II, his show at City U Gallery with Tozer Pak Sheung-chuen, Ching has taken the university itself as his testing ground, crafting more than 40 new pieces that display his unique approach to art and life.
A tall, 34-year-old with slightly shaggy hair, Ching comes across as friendly, unpretentious and modest. Pak says he was inspired by Ching's 2002 piece Wet Print: Rainbow, in which Ching painted the railings of a footbridge a different colour each day for a week. It was the first conceptual art he'd seen using 'local content'.
If pressed, Ching admits to being a conceptual artist, but says labels aren't necessary. 'In Hong Kong it's different from America - I don't feel a very urgent need to identify myself, because actually no one cares about artists.'