Booth 3C17
Kabinett | Li Huasheng
Galleries | Zheng Chongbin
Hong Kong Convention And Exhibition Centre, 1 Harbour Rd, Wan Chai, Hong Kong
VIP Days (by invitation only)
Tuesday, March 26, 12 noon to 8pm
Wednesday, March 27, 12 noon to 4pm
Thursday, March 28, 12 noon to 2pm
Friday, March 29, 12 noon to 2pm
Saturday, March 30, 11am to 1pm
Vernissage
Wednesday, March 27, 4pm to 8pm
Public Days
Thursday, March 28, 2pm to 8pm
Friday, March 29, 2pm to 8pm
Saturday, March 30, 1pm to 7pm
INKstudio is pleased to announce the gallery’s participation in the 2024 Hong Kong Art Basel, opening in Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Center at Booth 3C17, presenting a solo program by Zheng Chongbin at Galleries, and solo program for Li Huasheng at Kabinett.
Previously, both artists have been the subject of solo booth presentations previously at Art Basel Hong Kong—Li Huasheng in 2016 and Zheng Chongbin in 2017. Li Huasheng’s works will be presented in conjuction with the Li Huasheng Art Foundation—based in the US—and will be the first significant presentation of his artwork at an art fair since his death in 2018. A survey of Li Huasheng’s late works featuring his signature, processual grid paintings, and the worldwide debut of a new series of works in the print monotype medium by San Francisco-based ink, video and light-and-space artist Zheng Chongbin will be presented at Galleries sector.
Li Huasheng: Late Works
Before embarking on his exploration of processual abstraction in 1998, Li Huasheng was widely recognized one of the pre-eminent traditional landscape artists of his generation. Li developed an unprecedented practice as an ink artist, in which he hand-limns vast grids of horizontal and vertical lines as meditative space. Each hand-brushed line —like an embodied EKG of his being in time— captures and records the moment-by-moment phenomenological state of his body, perceptions, feelings, emotions and thoughts. Holding the brush as only a painter trained through decades of practice is able, Li deployed each line in a state of meditative concentration, so that any minor fluctuations are directly attributable to fluctuations in qi, or the vital energy of his body and mind. This practice has occupied him for over a decade.
In 2016, INKstudio debuted Li Huasheng’s late, processual grid paintings to international collectors and curators through its solo both presentation at Art Basel Hong Kong. As a direct result of this presentation, Li Huasheng’s works have been accessed into important public institutions including the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum in Los Angeles and the M+ Museum in Hong Kong. Tragically, Li Huasheng passed away not long after in 2018 of lung cancer.
In his will, Li Huasheng established the Li Huasheng Art Foundation—a public benefit, charitable nonpprofit formed and operated in the United States—and donated all of his remaining artworks to the Foundation. This year, INKstudio will be partnering with the Foundation to offer a curated selection of Li Huasheng’s late, processual grid paintings and concurrent minimalist landscape paintings in order the raise funds for the Foundation’s charitable nonprofit programming. This will be the first time since Li Huasheng’s passing in 2018 that international collectors and curators will have the opportunity to see and acquire artworks from this important collection. For more information, please visit: www.lihuasheng.org
Zheng Chongbin : New Monotype Prints
At his solo debut at Art Basel Hong Kong in 2017, LACMA director and curator Michael Govan initiated an ongoing curatorial dialog with the painter, video and light-and-space artist Zheng Chongbin. At the time, the artist had developed parallel practices in light-and-space installation and non-representational painting based on the indexical presentation of material. In 2018, artist and curator met to discuss the possibilities of using the print medium to bring these two practices into productive dialog. In 2021 and 2022, the pandemic presented the artist with the opportunity to work with a master print-maker in the San Francisco Bay Area to explore the possibilities of the monotype process.
INKstudio will present resulting series from Zheng Chongbin’s exploration at 2024 Hong Kong Art Basel. Zheng uses the chine collé process to layer materials with light-modulating properties: mylar for optical reflection, a type of optically translucent paper from Japan for optical layering, and passages of ink and acrylic on raw sandlewood paper taken directly from his indexical painting practice. Zheng then uses a range of additive and subtractive processes to create passages of subtlely graded white, black and silver oil paint to modulate the light reflective and transmissive properties of his chine collé materials. The resulting monotype surfaces not only modulate light but evoke an experience of line, plane, angle and layered space not unlike that found in Zheng’s light-and-space installations and non-representational painting.
Just as artist has stated, Like ink, the oil based ink breathes. It appears in different forms on different material surfaces, and the form is alive. It brings me closer to the relationship between operation and life. It is a kind of communication with life forms. This will also occur in painting, there is a strong alternation between my painting and prints. Doing prints reminds me of the norms of life. Such as going up the mountain and going down to the water, they are completely different but are both within the scenery. Going up the mountain requires enhanced breathing, while going down to the water requires holding one's breath. Although they are opposite, they both maintain the best state of life. In this sense, my feeling of doing prints is to interpret the required steps into living forms. When lifting the paper from the printing press, the feeling is like waiting for the arrival of life. The expectation is like waiting for the life to be born.
