Chan Po Fung 陳寶鋒

Endless Hard Work, Endless Happiness, 2024

Installation Art
35mm x 25mm x 18mm
Found Object, Casted Silver

“Life is like a machine, operating day by day, accumulating on one hand and wasting on the other hand. The process is hard but also joyful.”

Looking up to the sky, the word “HAPPY” in the signboard is crystal clear. Under the sign of "Happy Printing Company," Mr. and Mrs. Kwan have entered the age of enjoying life. They still print meticulously, day in and day out. Mr. Kwan joined the industry in 1957, got married in 1971, started his own business in 1972, and moved to Tai Kok Tsui in 1977. The reason for moving to Tai Kok Tsui was the proximity to the pier, which made it easy to go to Central to buy printing grains.

The 1970s was the heyday of TKT. There were many transportation companies, which brought in orders for printing slips, envelopes, letter papers and invoices. The Heidelberg printing machine purchased from Holland at that time are still working well and are used in conjunction with the offset printing machine to fulfill the orders day after day. Nowadays, most of the printing orders come from nearby stores and companies, sometimes old customers travel across the region to make their orders . In particular, some customers who came to print wedding invitations ten years ago for their designs have come back to visit Mr. Kwan.

The name of the company, “Happy”, is a reminder to Mr. and Mrs. Kwan that they have to work hard in life, but they only hope to be “happy” in return. The couple has been married for more than half a century, and they have worked hard to raise their children. A simple and stable life is already the greatest joy and “Happy” for them.

Typesetting sorts are becoming increasingly rare. The abrasion of the sorts over time will blur the strokes of the typeface. Lead sort and characters on counters exist for printing, so they are all mirrored. In this work, the numerical disk inside the counter is replaced by positive Chinese character, with 60 characters consisting of keywords from the interview. Audience can press the counter to make it rotate and form random combinations. This endless repetition of labor transforms the pursuit of an outcome into a process of appreciation, with the viewer assigning meaning to it.