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Acclaimed artist Franz Ackermann is returning to his roots, writes Clare Morin

Hong Kong is well known as a city for banking, but is it also a city for art? Many see it as a harsh working environment for artists, yet almost two decades ago, one of Germany’s most renowned contemporary artists deliberately chose this city as his muse.

Franz Ackermann first arrived in Hong Kong in 1990, as a graduate with a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) scholarship. “The funny thing is no artist from Germany ever went voluntarily to Hong Kong for one year,” he says in the offices of the Para/Site Art Space in Sheung Wan. “They didn’t have any structure to bring me over. So they asked me in a very non-bureaucratic way, why don’t you just jump in a plane and give us a report?”

Ackermann did just that. With a miniscule monthly budget of HK$2,000, he landed in Hong Kong and booked himself into a dormitory in Mong Kok. The artist had a background in science and had come here to explore the outer frontiers of abstraction. His premise was to take his position as an outsider and explore the city’s secret ‘codes’. “When I finished my studying, most of my work was about science and codes. If abstract science becomes a code, what happens if these abstract signs become a language, the Chinese language? And if these become public abstraction...”

It took him a few months before a breakthrough came. In the years leading up to the handover, young Brits were flocking to the city, to work, to travel or to make their start in life (colonial Hong Kong allowed British citizens to remain in Hong Kong with no restrictions). “It was a cultural shock in the beginning, and all these questions I’d so nicely prepared for the city, I threw them into the water,” he says with a laugh.”The first couple of weeks and months it was fighting to survive, in a very funny way. I met all these boys from Scotland, from England. They were all escaping a Thatcher recession. They were working-class people. In a way, they were in the same situation as me. I came with a small scholarship, and they were trying to get some money.”

Yet Ackermann was here for his art. He studied the city, walking the streets, visiting tourist spots and reading newspapers. “I felt like [I was] in a hologram of my artwork,” he remembers. “It was not two dimensional anymore … this kind of public life. It became like a three dimensional; four dimensional thing, which comes over you from all sides. This was a very interesting, very profound experience.”

One day the artist bought a notebook, measuring 13cm by 19cm, and, with water colours, painted his first ‘mental map’. Taking a precise physical location, such as the Peak, as his starting point, he drew elements of a map and then added in emotional abstractions – colours to signify the mood of the place, fragments of architecture and codes that resembled the Chinese language. “I answered more or less the codes of the city, the secrets of the city and transformed them into secrets for other people. Suddenly I was an artist again, from anonymity I found a form.”

When Ackermann returned to Germany the following year, his career flourished. His homeland had changed irreversibly in the two years since the Berlin wall had fallen, and the world was hurtling towards a globalized, digitalised age where his mental maps suddenly had immense relevance. Fast forward to the present, the artist is now represented by London’s eminent White Cube gallery, his work is exhibited in major museums worldwide, and his style has expanded to include canvas and installation. Yet, the 13cm by 19cm mental maps he is famous for have remained central to his art.

This month, Ackermann is returning to Hong Kong for My Secondary Coming at Para/Site Art Space. “The mental maps are still the central nerve, the central attitude of my artwork. That’s why I call it my secondary coming.” Ackermann still isn’t exactly sure what he will create, but hints of “making the whole room mental, in a reduced form.” He will also exhibit original mental maps made in Hong Kong in 1990, and deliver a talk organised by the Hong Kong Art School.

Tobias Berger, curator of Para/Site Art Space has increasingly been bringing big name artists to the independent art space. 2006 saw the arrival of multi-talented digital animator and activist Paul Chan. “The strategy was either young local artists with talent or international superstars, people … who show at biennials... because nobody else is showing it in Hong Kong” says Berger. He points out the strikingly obvious fact that an artist of Ackermann’s stature, with his deep connection to the city, would make an ideal candidate for a solo show at the Hong Kong Museum of Art (are you listening LCSD?). “The sad thing is that Franz should be showing at the Museum of Art. We do all these shows that are connected to Hong Kong. On the one hand it is great for Para/Site because we are the only ones, but it’s sad for Hong Kong.”

In a city where people say that artists can’t survive, Ackermann poses a superb lesson: it’s not about the artist battling the city. It’s about the artist listening to the city, and letting the inspiration flood in. Maybe this is a city for art, after all.

My Second Coming opens Sat 5, 6.30pm, at Para/Site Art Space, 4 Po Yan St, Sheung Wan, 2517 4620. Artist’s Talk, Wed 2, 6.30pm-8.30pm, Room 1907 AB, Hong Kong Art School. Reservations are essential: info@para-site.org.hk.