In many ways, Evan Chow represents a new generation of Asian art collectors who are reimagining what art collecting looks like in the 21st century. A managing partner at MCL Financial Group and a descendant of the Lee family that founded Bank of East Asia, he founded and manages the family office, CEG Capital, alongside his broader financial interests. He is the first Hong Kong-based trustee to be appointed to the board of the New Museum in New York, a member of Cercle International of the Pompidou and a founding patron of the M+ Museum – a corporate imprint that reflects a collector who has long recognized that patronage and acquisition are two sides of the same coin. His growing collection of over 500 works is global in breadth and focused in scope, with particular attention paid to geometric abstraction and emerging and mid-career artists from Hong Kong. In 2023, he established the Ivan Chow Art Prize at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, to support a body of work across undergraduate and postgraduate exhibitions.
The institutional weight of Chow’s collecting career is, in many respects, a product of his disbelief in coup d’état—the sudden appearance that inspires or shapes a collection. His collecting journey didn’t begin with a crucial first purchase; It developed when he lived with works of art. “They start shaping the way you see,” Chow tells Observer. His first purchase was a print of Zhang Xiaogang’s Bloodline series, which he acquired after spending some time at ArtHK, the art fair that later became Art Basel Hong Kong. “I remember this experience more than the acquisition itself. It was more of a growing curiosity than a defining moment.”
What attracted him was the desire to understand how some works maintain structure and clarity. “I was interested in how artwork could change the way a room feels, not by dominating it, but by bringing a sense of proportion and balance into it,” he says. Even after years and many artworks between them, that hasn’t really changed. “The works I live with continue to refine this way of looking over time, rather than setting any fixed starting point.”
When asked if he saw his collection as a story, a constellation, or something more open, he was quick to choose the latter. “It doesn’t come in a fixed order, like on a shelf,” he explains. “Relationships are formed gradually, often through how works coexist with each other over time.” What interests him most is how works relate to place and over time. “Connections are often not linear. They reveal themselves through proximity, through contrast, or sometimes through a shared sense of structure that only becomes apparent after living with it for a while.”
If there is a theme running through the collection, it is not so much the subject matter as it is the way of thinking. “I find myself drawn to works that have a certain clarity and internal logic, where decisions seem deliberate and decided,” Zhao asserts. “This tends to create a kind of quiet cohesion across the collection, even when the works come from very different contexts.”
When asked if he had any favorites, he admitted that he has some works that he returns to often, but Lee Bae’s charcoal work is one of his most beloved. “What stays with me is the way he approaches the material,” he says. Coal begins as something fragile and impermanent, but in Pai’s work, through a deliberate and disciplined process, it is combined into something structured and durable. Every surface is developed patiently, and every mark is taken into consideration.
“There is a certain clarity in this approach,” he adds, identifying in any practice a way of working in which self-control and perseverance are central, and where meaning is not immediate, but gradually takes shape over time. “I find that this changes the way I think about strength. Not as something powerful, but as something that comes through consistency and care.” A truly powerful artwork, for Chow, does not reveal itself all at once.
Collecting often has an evolving trajectory, as cultural references, sensibilities and tastes change over time. When asked how his aesthetic and collecting philosophy has changed over the years, Zhao said that his basic approach has remained constant, but “the threshold has become clearer.” He has given himself more openness in recent years. “Now I find myself drawn more consistently to works that have their own structure, where the logic is internal and does not depend on context to sustain interest.”
“Spending time in different works, spaces, and conversations gradually sharpens your sense of what endures and what disappears.” He says it becomes a quieter process of narrowing down rather than selecting – a process in which the relationships between artworks seem more resolved without needing clear definition. “Most of it comes from time spent in galleries and institutions, and from the openness to allowing those encounters to extend beyond the moment.”
Chow grew up surrounded by his family’s collection of Chinese art and antiques: his grandparents, great-grandparents, and parents were all collectors of ink and ceramic arts, giving him an early sense of what it meant to live with art, even if his own path would eventually move in a different direction. But his choice to collect contemporary art was not rebellion. He was simply searching for art that would resonate with him and with generations to come. “It came about through research, asking questions, and gradually finding a way to engage that felt natural to me,” he explains.
His thoughtfulness, seriousness and curiosity made him one of the most respected collectors of his generation. He believes that “conversations with artists, curators and others working in the field were part of this process, but not in a way that seemed prescriptive.” “It was more about exposure over time, and letting that shape the way I approach collecting.” Chow tends to engage first with ideas, even before the subject and story. The artists, works and galleries that support them all play a role, “but what sticks with me is the way of thinking that the work carries.”
Chow has now spent years living and moving between Hong Kong, the United States and other cities, and is increasingly aware of how each place shapes the way one sees – something that particularly struck him after his recent visit to New York to mark the reopening of the new museum. “Every place has its own rhythm, in how space is experienced, how attention is directed, and how things are evaluated. After a while, you stop feeling the need to move between fixed positions, and become more interested in noticing what changes and what remains.”
The idea of a “bridge”—which fits both his personal interests and those of the group—is not something he thinks about directly. It tends to form on its own. “Hong Kong is already within that status, so it doesn’t feel like something that needs to be built so much as something that needs to be recognised.”
He admits that Chow’s background in private investment has partly shaped his approach to collecting, but mostly in terms of discipline, time and long-term thinking rather than in a purely financial sense. “In both contexts, there is an emphasis on structure, on understanding how different elements relate, and on taking a long-term view,” he explains. “This way of thinking influences the collection process, in terms of taking it into account when building the collection and accelerating it, but the standards are still very different.” He does not see the group as an investment in the traditional sense. “There is a level of discipline in the way I think about committing to a work, but what matters most is whether it can sustain its existence and continue to retain meaning while you live with it.” He admits he is analytical in some ways, but he is not driven by improvement. “It’s more about clarity, and sensing what resonates over time.”
Chow also collects design pieces alongside works of art and is not inclined to draw a strict line between the two: “What interests me is still the same: how something is made, how it maintains its structure in space. That’s what I’m often drawn to, and it’s what I come back to over time.”
Looking to the future, Zhao avoids pre-determined plans for the group’s next phase. “If anything, the focus remains on being more mindful of what I choose to live with—paying close attention to what it holds, while allowing the collection to develop in a way that feels natural rather than directed.” At the same time, he was thinking more about how to engage with art outside the group itself and how those encounters could be shared more widely in meaningful ways. “This prompted me to start setting up a foundation alongside the group, with an initial focus on supporting emerging artists and strengthening links between Hong Kong and the international art community,” he explains. In parallel, he was thinking about how the group could gradually assume a greater institutional role. “Both are still evolving, but they seem like a natural extension of how I have approached collecting thus far.”
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