Dali Bookstore
Author: Pen SO
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 172 pp
Dimensions: 170(w) X 240(h) mm
Publisher: PEN SO ARTLAB (Hong Kong)
Date of Publication: July 2024
Language: Traditional Chinese
Author’s Bio:
Pen SO
Pen So is an illustrator, comics artist and graphic designer from Hong Kong. In 2013, he attended the Comics Master Class presented by Hong Kong Arts Centre (Comix Home Base), marking the beginning of his creative journey. In 2015, he won the First Prize of the illustration group in the 7th Original Comic Competition. In 2016, he published his first individual illustration Hong Kong Havoc, and won the Best Illustrated Book in Hong Kong Golden Book Awards 2016, Distinguished Publishing Awards – The Best Publishing Concept of the 28th Hong Kong Print Awards 2016, and Publishing Awards in Hong Kong Publishing Biennial Awards. In 2017, he published Kowloon Walled City Graphic Novel: A Romantic Escape with the original author Yu Yi, and won the Best Mono/ Duotone Colour Book at the 29th Hong Kong Print Awards and the Publishing Awards in Hong Kong Publishing Biennial Awards.
From 2019 to 2021, he published the psychological horror picture book Trap and the graphic essay collection After Havoc. In 2022, his comic See You In Memories received the Hong Kong Comics Support Programme – Special Mention Award, the Publishing Awards in Hong Kong Publishing Biennial Awards, the Silver Award at the 16th Japan International MANGA Award, the New Horizon Prize at Bologna Ragazzi Award 2024 in Italy, and was selected for the Singapore Asian Festival of Children's Content – Book Illustrators Gallery 2024. It was also shortlisted for the Bologna Children’s Book Fair Illustrators Exhibition in Italy, and his picture book Guiding Light received a Merit award at the American 3x3 International Illustration Awards.
In 2017 and 2023, Pen So was invited by the Hong Kong Arts Centre (Comix Home Base) to represent Hong Kong at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in France. In 2019, he was invited by the Huberty & Breyne Gallery in Belgium to participate in the international collective exhibition WALLS commemorating the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and exhibited at the Urban Spree Gallery in Berlin in 2020. In 2021, he was invited to participate in the Rendez-Vous of the Amiens Comic Stripin France. In 2022, his works Kowloon Walled City Graphic Novel: A Romantic Escape were exhibited at Gallery IYN in Osaka, Japan. In 2024, he was invited to participate in the Bologna Children's Book Fair by Soaring Creativity – Hong Kong Pavilion.
Book Description:
One hundred years ago, André Breton announced the Surrealist Manifesto, which advocates the abandonment of rationality and instead embraces intuition and the subconscious to liberate thought and humanity. Dali, as the representative artist of surrealism, possessed mystical powers and superhuman abilities to paint surrealist works.
One hundred years later, in an age marked by the decline of physical book reading, a bookstore manager acquired Dali‘s mysterious powers. He then used his supernatural abilities to operate the bookstore, breaking through reality and creating surrealistic stories.
