Lighthouse are ink paintings by artists Albert Chung (鍾臻智) and 陳紫君 (TK Chan) , continuing their ongoing collaborative project Confluence. The series brings together the colour fields and spatial language of Western abstraction with the fluidity, tonal depth, and layered qualities of Chinese ink, exploring how colour, light, atmosphere, and material can become vessels for contemplation and energy.
First presented at London Art Fair in January 2026, Confluence marked a conceptual departure for the artists, who experimented with poster colour on xuan paper to depict a series of playful cats. This approach opened up new possibilities for thinking about ink, colour, and paper not simply as materials, but as active elements and sites through which energy can flow.
Since the 2010s, TK Chan and Albert Chung have developed distinct yet complementary practices rooted in contemporary ink. Both artists explore the subtle relationships between light, colour, and atmosphere, and how these relationships can evoke emotional and contemplative states. While CHUNG’s practice focuses on the meditative potential of ink, TK Chan’s work explores reflection, harmony, and quiet joy. As co-founders of BLINK Gallery, their Confluencecollaboration brings these two perspectives together within a shared visual language, balancing individual contemplation with collective experience.
The idea of confluence—the meeting of rivers, currents, and energies—provides the conceptual foundation of the project. It speaks to the convergence of the artists’ practices, traditional materials and contemporary expression, as well as the meeting of distinct artistic perspectives. A significant point of departure for CHUNG was his encounter with Hong Kong artist and professor Ou Da Wei, who introduced him to the principle “墨即是色” (“Ink is Color”). This idea expanded his understanding of ink beyond black pigment, revealing it as a spectrum of tones shaped through dilution, gradation, layering, and the movement of water.
The Lighthouse series developed from CHUNG’s research into Western abstraction during his artist residency at the Wilson Art Gallery and Museum. His study of Mark Rothko’s colour field paintings, together with the material qualities of Western acrylic painting, led both artists to consider how the visual language of abstraction might enter into dialogue with the philosophical traditions of Chinese aesthetics.
In Lighthouse, colour becomes both atmosphere and structure. Fields of colour, expanses of ink, and subtle shifts in tone create spaces that appear at once expansive and intimate. Like a lighthouse, the paintings suggest a point of orientation within an open field—an encounter between light and darkness, stillness and movement, the individual and the collective. Through the convergence of Western abstraction and contemporary ink, TK Chan and CHUNG continue to explore painting as a space where material, energy, and contemplation meet.
