The idea to create fantastical photomontages of the city occurred when he was taking a leisurely ride on the Star Ferry, a moment he captured in his first work, which shows him sitting on the roof of the vessel as it crosses the harbour. Two weeks later, he created a piece that shows the iconic Jumbo Seafood Restaurant, which was still afloat then, being attacked by the Kraken; another shows a jam-packed crossroads in Causeway Bay where passersby are holding Star Wars lightsabers as they cross the road, the caption reading, “Every street is a battlefront”. At the time he had no agenda other than to explore and reconnect with different parts of the city he’d lived in as a child. He adds, “My earlier works were meant to be funny and didn’t have any deep meanings.”

SurrealHK started attracting more attention in May the same year when he created a picture in which a giant, rusty knife-shaped signboard, having plunged from a height, stabs into a Sham Shui Po road full of taxis and passersby. The photo went viral. The sign was for Leung Tim Choppers Factory, a third-generation shop that has been running in the neighbourhood for more than 40 years.

Since January 2014, the Buildings Department has been on a mission to remove hundreds of unauthorised signboards and neon light signs that were erected in the 1960s. In 2022, more than 300 removal orders were issued in Sham Shui Po alone, and it is expected that 1,800 signs will be cleared this year across Hong Kong. The city’s signscape was once an iconic sight, inspiring the set of the 1995 Japanese anime Ghost in the Shell; the recurring backdrop in Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express (1994) and In the Mood for Love (2000); and the plot of this year’s Hong Kong drama A Light Never Goes Out.

Increasingly, Fung found himself inspired by local news and social issues, and felt the urge to use his designs to comment on them—or just make fun of them. “I picked up the attitude of having a laugh about heavy matters in Venezuela, where everyone looks at serious subjects with humour and a relaxed attitude,” he says. Some of his popular pieces include an endlessly recurring image of a Choi Hung Estate building, which was a metaphor for the city’s phenomenon of subdivided flats; a Causeway Bay street filled with neon signs which have already been taken down; and two versions of the Big Buddha: the first, in 2020, with a surgical mask, and the second in March this year, with the face mask torn off to mark the end of the citywide mask mandate. “Social topics resonate best with my followers,” Fung says.

The artist’s signature playful style has also caught the attention of luxury and lifestyle brands, like Oriental Watch Company, which collaborated with Fung on a commercial campaign, Take Your Time to Rediscover the City, in October 2022. For this commission, Fung created a picture of a tram driving out of a neon light-lined portal in the middle of Quarry Bay’s Monster Building, giving the impression that the tram is time-travelling from 1970s Hong Kong to modern times.

Anthony Tsang, head of marketing and digital (Greater China region) at Oriental Watch Company, observes that many watch collectors are also art lovers, and so art is an excellent means of communicating luxury watch concepts to his clients. “Tommy is a local artist who is famous for his passion for and dedication to rediscovering local culture. His art fits the vision we had for the campaign,” Tsang says. “SurrealHK represents a playful modern art concept to deliver different messages.”

Similarly, Martell, the cognac brand, believes art is an important part of marketing strategies and commissioned a piece from Fung for its Through the Swift Eyes campaign in December 2022. “It’s not about branded content any more, but content that expresses more personality, [which] is more interesting for our customers,” says Laura Fernandez, Martell’s influence and sponsorships brand manager. For the campaign, Martell looked for artists from around the world who could spotlight local cultures. Fung was selected for “the way he’s playing with Hong Kong cultural markers in his content. From imaginative and surreal scenes, he always proposes a creative vision of the city with strong visual stories. We love the way he imagined Martell and our [entrance] into the city.”

Regina Zhang, Affordable Art Fair’s director, has been working in the arts industry for more than 20 years, and says that hotels, car manufacturers and big brands often buy or commission art from artists for display. But the pandemic gave Hong Kong contemporary artists and designers such as Fung a boost, especially since international travel was restricted and overseas artists were limited in visiting the city. “The local artists were very much out there and open to collaborations, and through people within the [art] circle, friends of brands or friends of galleries, a lot of these collaborations between artists and brands sparked,” she says.

A chance encounter with an owner of a lifestyle product business who used to work in the fashion industry led to Fung staging his first exhibition in 2019; he was invited to work on nine surreal fashion pictures for the Max It Up show at Harbour City. Ruby Fung, founder of 13a New Street Gallery, who was at the event, noticed how people who used to buy lifestyle products were looking to buy contemporary and digital art that was fun, cute and colourful, and featured collective memories of Hong Kong. “A lot of people were staying home and were looking to decorate their homes with art,” she says.

In 2020, she set up a gallery that promotes local artists and invited SurrealHK to collaborate on two exhibitions: one in 2020 and another in 2022. She felt that SurrealHK’s incorporation of pop culture, including moments from Godzilla, Gundam and Back to the Future, into its art offered positivity during the trying times, and also attracted beginner art buyers who are not within the traditional art circle. Fung sold about 20 works at the latest exhibition. There is a growing interest in owning art, Zhang says, because it “has become a lifestyle trend. That’s probably why brands are also interested in working with the art sector to bring up the positioning of their brands.”

Wesley Ng, the co-founder and CEO of Casetify, which collaborated with SurrealHK in October 2022, concurs. “Art is what moves the world of lifestyle. A creative concept that is successful has the power to transform culture by creating new trends. It would not be possible to separate the world of luxury or lifestyle from that of art.” Ng adds that Casetify customers sometimes discover artists through his brand and end up collecting their art. “It’s very fulfilling to see that we can provide a global ecosystem for artists to connect with even more people.”

Today, SurrealHK is a full-time job for Fung, who creates two to three pictures per week and works seven days a week during peak seasons. In March, Tatler invited him to create a piece that celebrates Hong Kong for this month’s Design Issue. He came up with a piece that features iconic Hong Kong elements: the skyline, Duk Ling, a Star Ferry and koi carp.

“In the past, the harbour was full of these junks, which were fishing boats. Now, there are only a few left; at least they survive by being turned into tourist boats,” he says.

“Duk Ling, the Star Ferry and the ding ding are ‘friends’,” in terms of being cultural icons that are less common than they once were, he says. As for the koi, he has always been interested in incorporating oversized versions of native or iconic animals—pandas, Sheung Wan shop cats and Chinese white dolphins, for example—into his work.

Years of commercial collaborations haven’t changed this artist’s cheeky style and genuine love for art and his projects. He doesn’t see these associations as mere commercial transactions, but as a platform that provides “a special chemical” between the art and luxury worlds. “While I meet my clients’ requests, I also keep my style in the product,” he says. “I think that’s why they work with me, seeing how I combine the surreal and realistic.

“My motto as an artist is to make the impossible possible.” And the art that comes out of this motto certainly offers a magical appeal in reality—be that a personified Loewe bag travelling to Seoul, a giant ginger cat looking for the Casetify phone case it dropped or, in his work for Tatler, breathing new life into Hong Kong’s vanishing elements through his beautiful, tangible imaginings.

NOW READ

Meet three actresses shaking up Hong Kong’s film industry

How the ‘Rising Up’ installation at Harbour City by French artist Jean-René, an ode to the spirit of athleticism, pays tribute to Hong Kong

Casetify founder Wesley Ng on catching BTS and Kylie Jenner’s eye, and his recipe for success