 Their methods are markedly different, but Eric Chan and Howie Tsui—two of Ottawa's rising art stars—share Chinese ancestry and an epic approach to detailed illustrative works. More importantly, both seem on the brink of a major breakthrough; their solo shows this spring introduce fantastical renderings of growing size, complexity, and narrative sophistication.
Chan is busily preparing a new series called I am My Introspection for four showings of his digital illustration in Tokyo throughout the month of May. Tsui, meanwhile, is taking time out from near-continuous touring with Ottawa band The Acorn (he plays guitar). Tsui's much-anticipated Horror Fables show at Carleton University Art Gallery runs from late April to mid June.
To consider the cultural, social, and artistic forces that influence these complex young men, Guerilla thought it best to simply furnish a few relevant topics of conversation and let them go at it in real time on Google chat. Here's how it unfolded. _________
Eric: haha I live!
Howie: oh there it is. I didn't know if this is gchat or ichat
Eric: yea I dunno how to use ichat.. but google will document this auto.
Howie: yeah. i have it on save.
Eric: I'm listening to the Condor Heroes sound track
Howie: that shit's like 80 episodes
Eric: i just watched 3 episodes ... is that including "The Return of the Condor Heroes?" ... my bro has all of them... so yea its gonna take me some time for sure
Howie: either each series is 80 or they are combined to be 80. I kept it reasonable and got into this 6 episode shorty: http://lavender.fortunecity.com/stroheim/638/saga.html yang's saga
Eric: oh damn this is related to condor?! i don't think I've seen this one ... it's about Yang's growing up life?
Howie: no. The stars are the actors during that golden era of Hong Kong period dramas
Eric: oh ... but yea ... these guys are all legit ... none of this modern mainstream shiet ... it's totally ruining it
Howie: it's about this Yang family with 7 sons and they're really good soldiers during the Sung Dynasty. There's all these demi-gods that go down to earth to so-called alleviate the conflicts, but cho yun fat's character, who play's a god, starts meddling
Eric: I'd like to do condor sometime, but probably on my death bed when I have the time 
Howie Tsui, untitled (detail), 2009
25" x 76", ink, acrylic and Chinese paint pigments on mulberry paper
Howie: I was doing 'work' sketching out images from the show of people getting dragged by horses and getting their forehead skin ripped over their faces
Eric: so lets see, I how should we start? How should we go about this nice conversation?
Howie: well, this is the 1st point: Chinese cultural foundation underpinning and influencing your "Western" style art
Eric: ah true ... yes ... we grew up watching these shows ...
Howie: your relatives were sending these to your folks in the 80s?
Eric: I was 4 when I started watchin them... I had no idea wat was going on...
Howie: except you were watching people's forehead skin getting ripped down over
their faces
Eric: hahahah true, heads being lopped off, burned... stabbed... bloood... we got VHS tapes of all these chinese dramas ... and we would all sit and watch it together
Howie: We were getting it sent to us in Africa and also Canada.
Eric: skulls heads that have been pierced by fingers... wow! that is true.. how old were you when you were in Africa?
Howie: from 1 to 6... gu gu
Eric: I watched the final episode at my bro's place of that arc. Yeung Guo is legit
Howie: Or how about Wai Seiw Bo? Tony Leung as the prostitute's kid who becomes the Emperor's right hand man, pretending to be a eunich to get into the royal court and then amassing 7 wives ... anyways..we're a bit off base. Although this is what we should be talking about. Culturally, these mystically awesome tv shows were remakes of these classic stories. 
Eric Chan, Revival of the Ancient Sect (Part 1), 2009
50" x 29" Eric: yes, I believe Condor Heroes was written back in 1957.
Howie: The condor series derived from The Condor Trilogy written by jim yong, who specializes in Martial Arts stories ... Thanks wiki
Eric: ahah truth
Howie: but how would you connect something like that to your work?
Eric: it seems that the Chinese cultural foundation of our work was based upon our childhood memories of the things we watched — these shows.
Howie: It's very true. My work has always been about excavating memories of childhood. Things that sparked my imagination and opened up the possibility of another reality. I guess cause the world is so effed, I'm still searching for a place where I can ride a large Condor and make out with ladies that sleep on a rope
Eric: perhaps because we were so young, we had vivid imaginations of what they did on the screen and translated visually in our minds ... its been so embedded to our core. For me, it is an escape from
this all this shiet ... Sometimes I just want to be a monkey and roam around without any concerns but to be adventurous. I also think that I have always had a disconnection with my Asian heritage ... in some ways working in this mode allows me to rekindle what has been lost.
Howie: In a way, this new series, i'm trying to make my own period drama, except there's more monsters and less romance
Eric: SHIT man I feel ya on this one! 
Howie Tsui, Judgement at Sanzu River, 2008 Howie: Well, how are you incorporating this cultural stuff into the new work? Is it more oblique? i'm going to your site
Eric: I feel that in my point as of now ... I feel like yes, there are more monstors, more obstacles, more challenges ... new mountains to climb, and yes, less romance. Its not an easy road but its the path of every artist who strives to master their craft ... so tell me about the Grotesque pieces you have been creating recently. I want to know what it is behind these masks because I feel their are meanings behind it
Howie: Well, I've been researching for the past year and developing a resource from ghost stories, monsters, buddhist hell scrolls, HK tv dramas, and stories from relatives. I'm sort of distilling all the strong imagery and characters and jamming them all together in these large scroll paintings. Trying to create new stories out of the old and since I'm exhibiting them now, the current socio-political climate will naturally ooze into the pieces and make connections
Eric: At the end you will have a large installation of these strong powerful motifs, I find that this is a tale about yourself isn't it? Do you find that the pieces speak about your thoughts and desires?
Howie: not really. I'm sneaking elements from familial accounts of ghost stories into the pieces as a contribution from 'me', or 'oral history', but it's a small ratio amidst the remaining chaos. I'm actually worried that the images are maybe too graphic ... That I'm gonna take some heat from funding agencies and also not be able to sell the work to collections or collectors. But, it's hard to self-censor, when these are the images I'm feeling this strongly about.
Eric: Hmm interesting, it is always a fine line between what we want to express...and who we need to please
Howie: I'm just scared that viewers think it'll be overkill and that there's no basis or sourcing of these scenes. But these are stories parents tell their kids so they behave
Eric: Yes and isn't that the whole point about the grants? I mean, they approve it because they want to see what you see. I think in the grand scheme of things, it is important to share this cultural element
Howie: it's true. Hope they can handle what I see. My visions are High Fever Visions
Eric: i think this manifestation would never have been created if it weren't for where we are living now. we represent this culturally diverse society.
Howie: Such a good time for food. But yeah, I'm like taking from Japanese stories, which are adapted
from Chinese stories, while I'm looking at the most horrible images of the Nanking Massacre mono-mongrel culture
Eric: I think all in all, the work we create is based upon everything that we have experienced - old and new. I am currently working on a new series "hoping" to have a nostalgic theme to it. 
Eric Chan, City Lights, 2007
40" x 28" Howie: Word. Bring back those warm memories.
Eric: keepin the "eep" ness to the art but its been taking months and months to prep.
Howie: So this is the second point: movement away from directions taken by peers in art school. So were you 'rebelious' in design school?
Eric: I was rebelious but I never showed it ... I felt that when I was studying at the art school I was attending there was a trend to paint things. People painted naked ladies with bushy private parts, women giving birth ... I guess it was like crazy shit back then
Howie: the trend at mine was physicality. It felt good painting that way, all romantic artist like, but in the end, the images were sort of weak.
Eric: but i didn't want to paint those... I wanted to paint city scapes, people sculpted bowls in ceramic class... I made a series of transformer robots ... I don't know i felt I never really fit in with the crowd. I tend to get agigtated easily...and need to move on to the next thing.
Howie: I was sort of bored to death from the forced conceptual and minimal elements in the curriculum. I went to artschool, because I liked drawing and painting pictures of fantastical shit and communicating through these images.
Eric: fantastical shit is da shit! But yea... I just find people do it for the sake of doing ... it must have meaning.
Howie: It was all Western art curriculum: curascuro, trompe l'oiel, representation and some newer techniques. I was basically saved when I stumbled into Giant Robot, Juxtapoz, and Bay Area Street Art. I realized I could actually make all the drawings in my sketchbook into serious pieces. Very liberating
Eric: Yes when I read those too, I realized that there are many that felt this way so I was like fukkkkkk I was close to being stuck in the Matrix!
Howie: those lessons were pretty helpful, indeed, I wouldn't want to shit on them, they did make me feel like an outsider, because Eastern art stresses different aspects of image making
Eric: funny though that artwork seen in Jux, Giant Robot, etc. is making its way into major fine art galleries
Howie: Well, now there's a glut of folks just reproducing artwork that looks like work that'd work for those magazines, especially Jux, instead of taking from it and putting your self in it and flipping and bouncing it and making something new.
Eric: yea, but you can tell right away that it lacks substance.
Howie: ok. 3rd point: evolving complexity of your art works, particularly towards developed environments/landscapes ... I know in my new work, I'm incorporating landscapes to place my characters in. I've never done that before and they're like bastardized chinese landscapes 
Howie Tsui, Storm God, 2008 Eric: Yes, I think landscapes play an important role in my works. Again found in much Chinese literature and artwork - they express their feelings through the description of their environments. When I speak of environmetns its just not only what we see around us but what we feel.
Howie: Yeah, it's a very zen relationship to landscape. I'm sort of taking zen landscapes and turning a rock originally used to balance the composition, into a weeping rock, which is the location where a pregnant lady was killed by a bunch of theives (from a Japanese story)
Eric: I find that your pieces in Shunga and Monsters, each figure is a landscape itself.
Howie: Well, in Shunga & Monsters, i'm collaging with copulating bodies, that in a sense, resemble nature. Mounds and trees and whatnot. Your scapes feel very futuristic to me. like akira
Eric: Hmm very interesting you say this. I think what I want to express is that moment in time ... when you look at the landscape of a city from afar. What does that translate into emotionally and in the end the visual rep. of it.
Howie: You're almost hiding all this deeper, personal and emotional content behind the digital medium which normally isn't associated with expression.
Eric: arg...yea I know. which is frustrating but I feel it can still be expressed somehow and I hope to at least get one step closer to it.
Howie: So lets go to our next and final point ... the increasing "attention" from the outside world... (beyond Ottawa) ... I haven't been totally blowing up by any means. I am hoping this Horror Fables series will help me get some ups. It's larger and more ambitious than anything I've ever done. I've got a show at Magic Pony in March, Ace Art in Winnipeg in October, and one in Halifax too
Eric: Man getting gigs at Magic Pony is great! I would love to do that
Howie: I'm also really lucky cause this reputable dealer in Calgary (Trepanier Baer) is carrying the Shunga & Monsters pieces. They can actually sell my pieces for a price that I don't feel I'm being undervalued ... But you're going to Japan, which is super exciting
Eric: yes, I am having 4 shows in Tokyo. I hope to reveal my new works then. I would like to see what the people's response will be. It's a big risk and I am nervous but I feel it is what i have to do to take my work to the next level. I'm feeling the pressure too... not much time.
Howie: well If you start getting into Condor Heroes, you'll be fucked
Eric: I KNOW shiiiitttt ... well i just got a call from the Mac Clinic and my machine is back to
norms ... so tonight i'll be at it again... 
Eric Chan, A Path Towards Reflection, 2009
38" x 42" Howie: doing 'work' just watching movies and drawing shit. Yeah me too. Going to bed at 4 and shit, it's nice that the world is quiet and peaceful, but the next day you only have a couple hours to get groceries
Eric: shit shower eat draw and sleep
Howie: i have trouble getting to sleep after working ... the mind is too racey and I'm just seeing all these demons grinding souls in a giant pestle and mortar
Eric: hehehe, u have such an imaginative mind my friend
Howie: full immersion into hell. Aight let's wrap this shit ...
Eric: truth truth ... holy shiet its 4:18
Howie: uh huh. get to it. For more on Howie Tsui, vistit howietsui.com.
For more on Eric Chan, visit eepmon.ca.
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