INKstudio will showcase seven contemporary ink artists. Each artist explores a different way of creating contemporary art from the traditional East Asian language of brush and ink, yet taken together the seven artists allow us to consider how the creation of ink art transcends socio-political contexts.
A Taiwan-born literati-recluse, Peng Kanglong explores nature through brushwork in his flower paintings, using wild cursive texture strokes to render natural forms and the space in which his subjects live. For Taipei Dangdai, INKstudio will present the artist’s latest large-scale flowerscapes. In contrast, Sichuan-born artist Li Huasheng deconstructs INK into a singular practice of meditative brushline in which natural form is replaced by indexical grids of horizontal and vertical lines. In collaboration with The Li Huasheng Art Foundation, INKstudio will present the artist’s ground-breaking grid paintings alongside his early traditional landscapes. Shanghai-born artist Zheng Chongbin, alternatively, deconstructs INK not into brushline but into pure material in order to reveal the quality and behavior of nature itself. INKstudio will present a representative selection of his ink and acrylic paintings on xuan paper.
Essentially self-taught as an artist, Yahon Chang sees art as an expression of human compassion as personally experienced through his Buddhist and Christian religious practice. In contrast, the Beijing-born woman artist Bingyi sees art a poetic act of creation between artist and nature and a spiritual practice in and of itself. INKstudio will exhibit Yahon Chang’s iconic Black series of Buddhist figures alongside Bingyi’s fine-“white”-lined fan paintings drawn from her poetic writings.
Belonging to a younger generation of artists in Taiwan, Ethan Su Huangsheng captures the experience of contemporary urban life through his Song-style gongbi renderings of figures and landscapes. Guangdong artist Lao Tongli, similarly, uses gongbi brushwork and materials to render life experience using nature-based metaphors. INKstudio will present each artist’s latest paintings to explore how next-generation artists are investigating China’s visual history in order to convey contemporary lived experience.
Through highly regarded projects at Performa 19 in New York (2019), Palazzo Strozzi in Florence (2019), Outset’s artist-in-residence in London (2019), Manifesta 12 in Palermo (2018), Museum of Contemporary Art (MACRO) in Rome (2016) and the official collateral program of 56th Venice Biennale (2015), Yahon Chang (b. 1948) has become widely recognized as an international performance artist outside of Taiwan. Attendees of Taipei Dangdai will have two opportunities to learn more about this distinctive aspect of his artistic practice.
