Art POPS™ at Three Garden Road: David Hockney + Technology

The Lobby at Three Garden Road, which is owned by Champion REIT, proves once again Hong Kong is spoiled for choice when it comes to art displayed in Privately Owned Public Spaces. Ascend the outdoor staircase, itself a mural of flowers, to the lobby. Here, on the high granite walls with light streaming through and greenery inside and out, are a series of David Hockney’s 2021 iPad floral still life paintings (limited editions printed on paper) and a limited edition (8 of 12) print of his very large (almost 9 feet by more than 28 ft) 2018 “photographic drawing” Pictures at an Exhibition, as well as two images generated by AI (not Hockney’s).

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“Throughout his long career, David Hockney has embraced new technologies with the aim of opening up temporal, spatial, and perspectival capabilities. Never content to rely on the construct of one-point perspective, Hockney has employed the Polaroid camera, Xerox, fax machine, Photoshop, and the iPhone and iPad in pursuit of expanding the visual experience.” GRAY Gallery in 2021

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Hockney is more than a master of color. GRAY gallery, which has hosted about 10 shows of Hockney's work, including shows featuring the works on display at the lobby, writes: “Throughout his long career, David Hockney has embraced new technologies with the aim of opening up temporal, spatial, and perspectival capabilities.” In fact, Hockney pioneered the use of the iPad as an art medium. According to Sotheby’s, whose March 2026 Hong Kong auctions included three of the artist’s iPad paintings from his 2011 Arrival of Spring in Woldgate en plein air series, Hockney began using the iPad as a creative tool within a year of the device’s debut. His “ground breaking” Woldgate series “demonstrated…digital art…could be as expressive and powerful as painting and printmaking,” Sotheby’s explains.

Printed via inkjet, Hockney painted the original 20 floral still lifes in 2021 while quarantining in Normandy France during Covid. He shares in an essay about the original 20 floral still lifes, “‘the flowers …came from a florist in Dozulé. JP ordered them telling the florist to use color as a guide.’”

In his essay  Hockney describes his creative process and why the frames he chose worked with the floral iPad paintings: “‘They looked startling because the frames were very hand done in an old way and my pictures were also hand done in a new way.‘” (The original framed prints can be seen in the photo montage below.)

The Pace Gallery, which together with four other galleries, including GRAY gallery, exhibited the floral still lifes in the 2023 show 20 Flowers and Some Bigger Pictures, writes: “Though attributes vary in each work, such as the species of flower, type of vase, and the color of the tablecloth, consistent elements across this series allow viewers to admire Hockney’s technique and dedication to his subject. Capturing a spectrum of floral compositions with contrasting tones and textures, Hockney displays his propensity for balancing the central artistic elements of line, color, and perspective.”  

The paintings, which “echo” Matisse’s work, were first exhibited at the Musée Matisse in Nice in the 2022 Hockney – Matisse. Un Paradis retrouvé. Hockney’s painting entitled The First One is featured in the Musée Matisse exhibition advertisement (top left above). In another image from the Hockney-Matisse exhibition, the original frames can be seen (top right above).

In a fantastic and creative use of an expanse above an escalator, Three Garden Road displays the 2.7m x 8.8 m limited edition of Paintings at an Exhibition. The grid of the lobby's granite wall, together with the marble inlay acting almost as a frame directing your eye up to the work, enhance the photographic drawing. For his photographic drawings, Hockney takes multiple photographs and then places them to create a composition. “From a series of individual photographs, Hockney constructs a seamless panorama that defies the natural parameters of time and space. The photographic drawing pulls viewers into a self-referential world that is at once familiar and entirely new,” Pace Gallery writes.

“A unique exhibition copy” of Paintings at an Exhibition — on a “life-size scale” — was comprised of 8 panels, and measured 4.7 meters x 15.2 meters/15.7 feet x 50 feet. When it was shown at GRAY gallery as part of the 2021Art Basel Unlimited, chairs matching those in the work were set out for spectators to use, making it a truly “immersive installation.” The gallery described the experience:

“Beyond the technological achievement of its production in life-size scale, Pictures at an Exhibition is a meditation on the act of viewing art and the passage of time: it defies conventional pictorial space and narrative, communicating three-dimensional space and time upon a two-dimensional picture field.”

It is both the size — smaller than GRAY Gallery's Art Basel Unlimited “unique exhibition copy” at 50 feet, but the same size as the one GRAY Gallery exhibited in its Chicago Warehouse in 2018 (2.7 x 8.7 meters/8 ft., 11.5 in.. x 28 ft., 8in) — and the placement high up on the lobby wall at Three Garden Road that generate in the viewer the feeling that you should pull up a chair to both appreciate the painting and be part of it.

The two AI generated images are very different from the striking Hockney art in the lobby and certainly have their limitations; however, they still contribute to the gallery atmosphere of the lobby. On the left above is Enchanted Anticipation and center and right Melodies of Celebration. Their simulated brush strokes and composition are reminiscent of Impressionist works. Some of the faces seem a bit off and lack human spirit. The clothing is not consistent. In Melodies for example, the skirt lengths and hats seem to cross decades. Despite their limitations, the two images, perhaps due to their placement (Enchanted Anticipation above the desk at Champion Tower) and their size (Melodies), work in the space.

Understanding how the two images were “generated” would provide context and enhance the viewing experience. AI is being used in art in so many ways now. Did a program combine existing images in a new way — think of Refik Anadol's amazing Unsupervised at the Museum of Modern Art in which an AI “reimagined” the museum's collection. Alternatively, were parameters, like “create an artwork echoing the style and time period of Renoir using a muted palette,” provided to an AI program? What kind of ink was used to print the images, and so forth.

The lobby at Three Garden Road connects to the Central Business District and, via a short walk, to leafy Hong Kong Park. This means you can access the lobby when it is both filled with the energy of the weekday hustle and bustle, which adds to the viewing experience, and on a weekend when it is less busy so you can view the works both up close and from a distance. Don't forget to see the fountains, greenery, and sculptures inside and all around at the neighboring buildings.