INK studio is proud to participate in Ink Asia, the world’s first art fair dedicated to ink art, from September 29th through October 2nd, with VIP preview on September 28th. This year's edition of Ink Asia will be staged alongside Fine Art Asia, Asia’s foremost fair dedicated to art and antiques, at the peak of the art season in Hong Kong when major art auctions take place in the same venue. Located at booth H10+J7, INK studio presents works by six artists, featuring Bingyi, Michael Cherney, Huang Zhiyang, Li Huasheng, Li Jin, and Zheng Chongbin. Our presentation is also complemented by a long silk handscroll by Bingyi in the public section of the fair.
An artist, architectural designer, curator, culturalcritic, and social activist, Bingyi (b.1975 in Beijing) has developed a multi-faceted practice that encompasses land and environmental art, site-specific architectural installation, musical and literary composition, ink painting, performance art, and filmmaking. In her large-scale ink paintings, Bingyi uses ink as "dark light" —carbon, an absolute absorber of light, in water, nature's universal translucent solvent—to illuminate the usually invisible and transient physical processes that enable ordered patterns and forms to arise from chaos. At the other end of her practice, Bingyi explores the microscopic origins of organic life in intimate, small-format paintings, in which her minute and meticulous brushwork paradoxically reveals a profoundly creative, gestural, and "calligraphically expressive" quality drawn from her daily calligraphy routine. For Ink Asia, INK studio showcases a long silk handscroll, Apocalypse, by Bingyi in the public section of the fair and also presents a selection of Bingyi's encyclopedic series Fairies, an ongoing catalog of virtual bio-organismic forms inspired by her exploration of classical literary themes.
Michael Cherney (b.1969, New York) took up photography and calligraphy after his relocation on Beijing in 1991 as a means to engage with the vastness of China’s landscape and history. Through his photographic journeys he has become intimately familiar with classical landscape paintings, which in turn guide his vision and attune him to the tensions between the singular and the timeless and sublime. Cherney began his grotto series around 2007, before a new wave of tourism and restoration altered the conditions and accessibility of the sites. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Getty Research Institute, and the university museums of Harvard and Princeton.
Huang Zhiyang (b.1965, Taipei) bridges the holistic worldview of classical Chinese thought withthe emergent and non-linear worlds of contemporary phenomenology and science.Best known for his biomorphic ink figures and abstract paintings in mineralpigments, he also creates sculptures and ecologically focused publicinstallations in natural materials. Huang Zhiyang represented Taiwan at the 46th Venice Biennale and had a solo exhibition at the National Museum of China in 2014. His works are in the collections of Taipei Fine Arts Museum, National Museum of China, and the Yuz Foundation.
Li Huasheng (b. 1944 in Yibin, d. 2018 in Chengdu) was a classically-trained ink painter who explored the shared phenomenology between mind-hand embodiment in classical brush and ink practice in calligraphy and landscape painting and time- and process-based practices employed in contemporary art. Li's practice included processual grid paintings, abstract ink landscapes, photography and ink-and-paper-based installations. In commemoration of the artist’s recent passing, INK studio will showcase Li Huasheng's iconic grid paintings and one of his rarely-exhibited and highly-abstract ink landscapes drawn from his deep connection with the mountains of the Himalayan Plateau in Ink Asia.
Best known for his lush and colorful depictions of sensory pleasures in contemporary China, Li Jin (b. 1958 in Tianjin) has now turned his focus towards painting in monochrome, translating his well-honed sensitivity towards color washes into a masterful control of tonality. He paints in a looser, more gestural and expressive daxieyi style, exploiting the accidental effects of the medium.
Throughout his career of three decades, Zheng Chongbin (b. 1961 in Shanghai) has held the classical Chinese ink tradition and Western pictorial abstraction in productive mutual tension. By exploring and exploiting the immanent qualities and behavior of his materials— ink, acrylic, water and paper—Zheng has developed a distinctive language of indexical abstraction—what critic Mark van Proyen calls “pre-constructed” in contrast to “de-constructed” art. Mounted on custom-fabricated, honeycomb-aluminum panels, Zheng’s latest works move into three-dimensional wall sculpture, enabling him to integrate elements of his light-and-space installation practice.
About Ink Asia
Ink Asia, the first-ever art fair specialising in ink art, was successfully inaugurated at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in December 2015. It is organised by Art & Antique International Fair Ltd, the team behind Fine Art Asia, Asia’s leading international fine art fair. Ink Asia aims to promote ink art at an international level through an art fair platform. The fair presents galleries and artists from Hong Kong and other Asian countries, featuring ink works in a wide variety of different forms. It explores the limitless possibilities of ink art and expands the dialogue between the traditional aesthetic and contemporary interpretations of ink.
About INK studio
INK studio is an art gallery based in Beijing. Its mission is to present Chinese experimental ink as a distinctive contribution to contemporary transnational art-making in a closely-curated exhibition program supported by in-depth critical analysis, scholarly exchange, bilingual publishing, and multimedia production. INK studio curates three to four major solo projects per year with artists such as Bingyi, Dai Guangyu, He Yunchang, Li Jin, Li Huasheng, Wang Dongling, Yang Jiechang, and Zheng Chongbin and exhibits works of diverse media, including painting, calligraphy, sculpture, installation, performance, photography, and video. Since its inception in 2012, INK Studio has regularly appeared at art fairs such as the Armory Show (New York), Art Basel Hong Kong, and West Bund Art & Design (Shanghai) and placed works into major public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, and M+Museum, Hong Kong.
