Owen Cheung
We at Kilometre Paris would like to present our muse: Owen Cheung. A maker, a builder, a
collector, not just of objects, but of obsessions, of histories, of intricate fascinations that shift
and evolve like clockwork mechanisms clicking into place. There is no half-measure with
Owen. When something captures him, it is total immersion, a plunge into the depths where
knowledge becomes artifact, where every passing passion leaves a tangible imprint. One
day, it’s the precise gears and levers of an automaton, the next, the quiet hum of a perfectly
restored kissaten in Japan. And just when mastery nears? The process resets, the next fixation
on the horizon, waiting to be unraveled.
Work, for many, is confinement. For Owen, it is structure, an essential rhythm to balance the
gravitational pull of curiosity. Absolute freedom would be too vast, too unshaped. Routine
gives focus, allows the mind to oscillate between discipline and discovery. And the job itself?
A dream to most, a reality to Owen, one that fuels his creative hunger, keeps his hands and
mind moving, keeps the cycle of learning endlessly turning.
Right now? He is resurrecting an automaton for an exhibition, coaxing life from brass and
steel, from mechanisms long forgotten. And always, there is his house, a living thing, never
finished, never settled, a project that grows and shifts alongside him, absorbing every new
obsession, every new inspiration.
Beyond the craft, there is travel, of course. Japan, but not the neon-drenched spectacle
that others seek. Instead, the tucked-away relics of the Showa era, the dim-lit kissaten where
time stretches, where stories are poured slowly, one cup at a time. A pilgrimage not just for
place, but for feeling, for the weight of the past resting quietly in the present.
And then, there is Venice. Impossibly real, impossibly fragile, a city built where no city should
exist. The birthplace of Carlo Scarpa, where form and function exist in perfect tension, where
architecture bends time itself. A place of memory, of love, of personal history. And just a
breath behind, Menorca, another space etched in nostalgia, another shore calling him
back.