BLACK Series  Hong Kong, 2013

In the BLACK series, Mountain Vastness, Charles’s first professional release, he made use of a simple monochromatic medium: charcoal. When formed into sticks, the medium — in itself the lightweight black carbon residue produced by strongly heating wood in minimal oxygen — allows him to create different vibrant strokes, lines and space, setting free the energies of its original crude form.

The resulting monochromatic mountainscapes are created in the hope that viewers will immerse themselves in a mystical place somewhere between everyday reality and the eternality of the mountain. 

The intention here is neither to reproduce mountains as they are nor search for accuracy in shape and form but to capture and express their very soul. Viewers are invited to feel, smell, touch and absorb the mountain in the hope that they attain an emotional connection with its ‘thereness’. 

The journey of Mountain Vastness — the artist’s first exploratory stage and with Rainbow as his co-artist for the installation — evolved in such a way that the mountain became much more than the sum of its component parts.