The Mars Impression project (2025) forms a key element within the Cabinet of Curiosities series, which explores intersections of art, science, and speculative wonder. This collaborative initiative, led by Studio Pollen (Michael Whittle and Atticus Sims), enabled Hong Kong ink master Hung Hoi to engage directly with the Martian landscape through immersive virtual reality.

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High-resolution panoramic mosaics captured by NASA's Curiosity rover—particularly a detailed vista from the Paraitepuy Pass region featuring sand ripples, rock formations, distant buttes, and rover tracks—were adapted into a VR environment. Departing from his decades-long practice of painting terrestrial landscapes in person, Hung Hoi immersed himself in this alien terrain, describing the experience as profoundly real and unprecedented. 

 

This revelation inspired a major new painting on Xuan paper (98.5 × 218 cm), rendered in ink and color. While preserving core principles of Chinese landscape painting—such as leaving blank space and evoking mountain structures—the work translates the stark, tree- and waterless Martian scene into a poetic composition reminiscent of aerial views of Dunhuang.

 

Believed to be the first Chinese ink painting of Mars informed by an artist's direct immersive VR experience, Mars Impression fosters a rich dialogue between cultural heritage, technological innovation, and humanity's expanding cosmic perspective.