anothermountainman may be marking his 30th anniversary in the creative industry with a major group show, but, as he tells Edmund Lee, it’s not (just) about him.

Stanley Wong Ping-pui, better known in art circles as anothermountainman, insists he’s not an artist. Though the acclaimed designer and advertising maverick, who turned 50 in November last year, has been leading a prolific career in fine arts since his 40th birthday, he nevertheless refuses to label his output as ‘artwork’. He calls it ‘personal work’.

“You won’t hear the term ‘artwork’ from my mouth,” Wong tells me over an orange juice, amid embarrassed giggling, as we meet up at a lounge one afternoon. “I don’t think of myself as an artist, even though I won’t stop people from seeing me as one.” He momentarily struggles to get out of the sentence, before adding: “It’s probably a bit much for me to confuse them any further, seeing they’ve given me a chance in the field.”

However big the effort, it’s not easy to maintain an air of modesty when you’ve just enlisted 30 of the best creative talents from around the world to mark your 30th anniversary in the creative industry. But that’s just what Wong has done with What’s Next 30x30, a multimedia group exhibition which has recently finished its Shenzhen run and is now opening at Hong Kong’s outsized space, ArtisTree.

While Wong sees the project as a recap of his three decades in the scene, he has also gone out of his way to engage in meaningful dialogues with his invited guests, asking each to contribute a work to the show before responding to every one of them with a work of his own. Twenty of Wong’s 30 works on view are taken from his lengthy career – spanning graphic design, commercials, photography and fine arts – while the rest has been made specifically for the occasion.

All the works, however, do not make a retrospective show – or at least that’s what the advertising genius in Wong would have me believe. “I’m not one of those people who’d do retrospectives,” he clarifies. “I’m quite scared of that. I rarely put myself out there. Here, I’m looking to do something for the younger generation. It’s the local culture and social values that I really care about.”

According to Wong, there are four aspects to creativity – commercial, cultural, historical and personal – and they are usually prioritised by people in that order. But he says it’s his objective in this exhibition to reverse the order of those priorities. The rest, he says, is merely packaging. “30x30 is just a gimmick. Why 30 people? Why 30 years? It sounds like a legitimate premise but, sorry, I just made that up.” Wong lets out a laugh, although his ‘curatorial’ effort here is certainly no laughing matter.

Divided into three sections – ‘society’ (tackling issues from living conditions to government policy), ‘ideology’ (exploring utopian values), and ‘time…life’ (contemplating the big questions) – the exhibit is brimming over with thought-provoking issues that far exceed the normal scope of any given career review.

Even the diversity of disciplines covered by Wong’s contributors is impressive in itself. Apart from notable graphic designers and artists (Katsumi Asaba, Alan Chan and Freeman Lau, to name a few), there are representatives from architecture (Kent Lui), fashion design (Yohji Yamamoto, Ma Ke), photography (Nadav Kander, John Clang), film (Yasmin Ahmad, Tsai Ming-liang), music (Lowell Lo, Kung Chi-shing) and beyond. The list of featured artists virtually covers Wong’s life – both personal and professional – over the past 30 years. There’s artist/designer Kan Tai-keung, who was Wong’s teacher, as well as master sculptor Ju Ming, who Wong has considered his mentor since he designed the poster for Ju’s Hong Kong exhibition in his first year in the business.

The 30th artist on the list is a relatively new acquaintance, ikebana artist Shuho, who Wong didn’t know until last October. And it’s been a poignant collaboration. Just when he was struggling to get in touch with his originally intended 30th guest, Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, Wong met Shuho during the latter’s brief visit to Hong Kong and the two quickly decided to collaborate on a new work, which Wong named Reborn-Ikebana from the start.

But a week before Wong flew to Japan in March to realise the concept, the earthquake happened. “People around me were telling me not to risk my life for art,” he recalls. “But after seeing how tough the Japanese people were in the face of disasters, I decided to go. Since I’ve named it Reborn-Ikebana, maybe I’m meant to finish this task.” The work was eventually finished 10 days before the Shenzhen exhibition opening in early April. “Today, I feel like this is my first work in the next 30 years,” says Wong. Whether that’ll be as an artist (excuse me) or filmmaker (a career move that Wong is determined to finally realise) or something else altogether, only time will tell.

What’s Next 30x30 is at ArtisTree Jul 6-Aug 9. For details, visit www.whatsnext30x30.com.