INK studio is proud to participate in Art Taipei from October 17 to 21. Located at booth E01, INK studio will present works by five contemporary artists who express their dynamic artistic concepts through the exploration of ink in different medium and formats. Highlights include Bingyi’s Archaeology of Waves series of abstract landscape as well as the exquisite landscape handscrolls and the Fairies series of album leaves; Taiwanese artist Huang Zhiyang’s recent Transforming Phenomena series of abstract paintings in high-gamut mineral pigments and traditional ink; Li Huasheng’s signature “grid painting”; a selection of Zheng Chongbin’s early works of abstract ink and acrylic on paper from the 80s and 90s as well as more recent works from the 2000s and 2010s; and Xu Bing’s early woodcut prints from the 70s and 80s, his Landscripts series, as well as one of his Background Story series, which will be shown in the Public Art and Themed Exhibition section.
An artist, architectural designer, curator, cultural critic, and social activist, Bingyi (b. 1975) 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. Adopting a non-anthropocentric perspective and channeling nature’s creative agency, her work is centrally concerned with the themes of ecology, ruins, rebirth, and poetic imagination. During Art Taipei, INK studio will present Bingyi’s abstract landscape series as well as her exquisite handscroll paintings and theFairies series of album leaves, demonstrating her exploration of the ink medium with profound diversity – channeling between macro and micro level of artistic practice and brushwork.
Huang Zhiyang (b. 1965) 's artwork bridges the holistic and organic world of classical Daoism, Buddhism and neo-Confucianism with the emergent and non-linear worlds of contemporary phenomenology, neurology, evolutionary biology and deep ecology. Best known for his biomorphic ink figures and abstract paintings using high-gamut mineral pigments, Huang's artistic practice also spans sculpture and ecologically focused public installations in bronze, stone, bamboo and other natural materials. Regardless of medium, his work reveals a common "unity of the universe-of humankind, microscopic life forms, plant life, and all other forms of presence." The Transforming Phenomena series presented this time combine high-gamut mineral pigments with traditional ink, exploring the Deleuzian border between order and chaos, stability and change.
Li Huasheng (1944-2018) 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. During Art Taipei, INK studio will present his iconic grid-paintings, which capture and record the moment-by-moment phenomenological state of his body, perceptions, feelings, emotions and thoughts.
Throughout his career of three decades, Zheng Chongbin (b. 1961) has held the classical Chinese ink tradition and Western pictorial abstraction in productive mutual tension. Systematically exploring and deconstructing their conventions and constituents—figure, texture, space, geometry, gesture, materiality—he has developed a distinctive body of work that makes the vitality of matter directly perceptible. Central to Zheng’s art is the notion of the world as always in flux, consisting of flows of matter and energy that repeatedly cohered and dissipated. Inherent in pre-modern Chinese and especially Daoist thought, this worldview enables contemporary inquiries into complex systems like climate and social behavior, artificial intelligence, and quantum physics. Through the interactions of ink, acrylic, water, and paper, Zheng’s paintings generate and record the processes that underlie the emergence of order (including organic life and human consciousness) and its inevitable dissipation. His paintings thus resemble natural structures ranging from neurons, blood vessels, and tree branches to mountains, rivers, and coastlines, but by instantiating their formation rather than by objective depiction.
Xu Bing (b. 1955) is widely recognized as one of the leading conceptual artists of language and semiotics working today. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, he is celebrated for his “capacity to contribute importantly to society, particularly in printmaking and calligraphy.” Born in Chongqing, Xu grew up in Beijing where he studied printmaking at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Trained as a printmaker, Xu is informed by the Cultural Revolution, Chan Buddhism, and his keen interest in the relationship between meaning and words, writing, and reading. He has famously re-invented Chinese characters and the English alphabet, rendering Chinese nonsensical and English into legible Chinese characters, effectively challenging comprehension of both. Xu Bing has held solo exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the British Museum in London, among other major institutions. Xu’s works have also shown at the 45th and 51st Venice Biennales; the Biennale of Sydney and the Johannesburg Biennale amongst other international exhibitions. Highlights for Art Taipei 2019 include works from his widely celebrated Landscriptseries as well as a selection of his early woodcut prints.
About Art Taipei
Continuing the highlights in ART TAIPEI 2018 that presented the multifaceted contemporary art through themed narrative in different exhibiting zones, ART TAIPEI 2019 is to comb through the multitudinous forms of contemporary art and to present the glory of its thriving development under diverse contexts. The attempt to recapture the flashes of blooming moments through our pursuit of eternity is in the depth of Chinese culture. Not unlike the wonderful scenery drawn out by robust brush strokes, its aura always returns with greater possibilities.
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.
