Hung Chun-Ho's solo exhibition opens on January 18 for two weeks at the library in Bussy Saint Georges, a suburb of Paris. Bussy Saint Georges is not far from Disneyland Paris, a new type of modern small metropolis. According to city officials, the city's residents come from all over the world, with every skin color and ethnicity represented, people from over forty countries gathered in one community, allowing one to truly experience what people often call the global village under globalization. The Asian immigrant population in the community is quite substantial (it is said that the deputy mayor is a Chinese immigrant), with several large Chinese supermarkets and restaurants, making daily life quite convenient (there are also forests and a golf course). Worth mentioning in particular is that a number of Taiwanese immigrant families live here, and through the enthusiasm of these internationally minded residents who love their homeland, Bussy Saint Georges and Dajia City in Taichung County, Taiwan, became sister cities. This connection was built upon the grand prospects and precious friendship of the global village residents. A harmonious metropolitan life akin to the United Nations, with multiculturalism making the city even more lively and rich, all of which sufficiently demonstrates the mutual benefit of living together in harmony.

The rich cultural atmosphere and distinctive character of Bussy Saint Georges as a global village led to the launch of a cultural season starting in January amid the fresh spirit of the new year. Beginning with an Asia month, a wide variety of Asian arts and cultural activities were held, and Hung Chun-Ho's solo exhibition took place at the library on this occasion. Hung Chun-Ho (born in 1941 in Dajia, Taiwan), graduated from the Department of Fine Arts at National Taiwan Normal University, is a rare artist accomplished in both letters and martial arts, possessing a deep and extensive inheritance of Chinese cultural tradition, with considerable mastery in calligraphy, painting, poetry, lyric verse, as well as the erhu and guzheng. His attitude toward life is candid, optimistic, and full of humor; his words and deeds are filled with wisdom, and every gathering always brings people hearty laughter—not only playing a homesick erhu tune but also singing aloud.

Chun-Ho's talent is evident to all: he writes fine calligraphy, plays fine music, composes fine poetry, and of course paints distinctive paintings (ink painting and oil painting). He is also a master of landscape garden design, and is skilled in jewelry design and everything else—a rare all-around artist with deft hands and a keen mind. In painting, he favors unconstrained abstract painting, using the myriad forms of the world and colorful ink to freely express his will and sensibility, pointing directly to the depths of his inner heart. The brush follows the mind's intent, the realm is created by the mind, seeking nothing from without, and under formless freedom he expresses his inner feelings and artistic conception. For this solo exhibition, a specially selected series of pictorial derivations from calligraphic pictographic forms is presented to elucidate the common origin of abstract painting and calligraphy or Chinese painting.

Two series are presented here: ink painting and acrylic, or acrylic with ink. The ink paintings of transformative forms stand out with rich originality; within the sensuous calligraphic brushwork imagery and the color-ink variations of tonal resonance, a kinetic rhythm unfolds like the movements of a musical composition. In the recent acrylic series, the aggregation of numerous small forms (squares, rectangles, irregular shapes, and lines), within a lyrical abstract poetic style, resembles the imagination of a fluid metropolis or an alternative nature. Under ever-changing forms and bold, expressive chiaroscuro colors, the poetic and picturesque quality is filled with rhythm and tempo, displaying extraordinary space, time, speed, and remarkable musicality. Clearly, calligraphy, painting, poetry, and music are all of one body in Chun-Ho's art.