Presenting artists: Chu Chu, Ming Fay, Kassia Ko, Kum Chi-keung, Shan Weijun, Walasse Ting, Wang Tiande, Xu Jianguo, Xu Lei, Yang Jiechang, Zhang Xiaoli
Alisan Fine Arts is pleased to participate in Art Basel Hong Kong 2019, presenting an exciting selection of ink art and contemporary sculpture. The esteemed Chinese artists represented in our booth have participated in several major, recent solo and group exhibitions, and their works are collected by museums across the world. Amongst our artists is the established Chinese master Walasse Ting, a predominant figure in the globalisation of contemporary Chinese art within the field of American Abstract Expressionism. Known as the “Flower Thief” (Cai Hua Da Dao), Ting's alluring and vibrant paintings are steeped in ink tradition and eroticism. Other Chinese diaspora artists to be represented are Shan Weijun, Xu Jianguo, and Yang Jiechang. In addition, we will feature the eminent ink painters Wang Tiande and Xu Lei, two artists known for modernizing ink tradition through the use of innovative techniques. Finally, we are proud to showcase newly created works by three emerging women ink artists: Chu Chu, Kassia Ko and Zhang Xiaoli.
As for sculpture, we are presenting enlarged fruit bronzes by the established New York based, Hong Kong artist Ming Fay and a multi-media birdcage installation by Hong Kong artist Kum Chi-keung.
Walasse Ting | (1928-2010) Chinese-American master Ting's paintings are a sheer testimony to love, life and beauty. His paintings of women, flowers, cats, fish, horses and fruits are often painted in a rich palette of bright acrylics on rice paper, layered with powerful effervescent brushstrokes in Chinese ink. His works are bright and colourful; his brushwork, full of motion and energy. In addition to ink art, Ting also used acrylic and oil pastel to create Western nudes on Western paper. Compared with his works on paper, these nude paintings are more sensual and erotic, created in a style more closely aligned with Western tradition. This exhibition will include one provocative nude from Ting's mid-1970s Love Me, Love Me series, and two strong and suggestive works on rice paper from 1990s. Alisan Fine Arts organised Ting’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong in 1986 and has since then held more than ten solo shows for him; the most recent one in 2017 to celebrate his prolific life. Musée Cernuschi in Paris had the artist’s first large-scale exhibition in 2017 and Taipei Fine Arts Museum also held a retrospective in 2010. His works have been collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Chicago Institute of Art; Tate Gallery, London; Musée Cernuschi, Paris; Shanghai Art Museum; Taipei Fine Arts Museum; Hong Kong Museum of Art.
Shan Weijun | (b.1962 Changzhou) Chinese-French artist Shan Weijun attaches great importance to the purity of expression in his paintings. He skillfully uses his brush to painstakingly apply layers and layers of tiny dots. He terms this creative and meditative approach, reminiscent of both the ancient Chinese “Rice-dotted Landscape” (midian shanshui) technique and the Impressionist pointillism that flourished in France at the end of the nineteenth century, as "a thousand points." The result is a series of complex ink paintings that combine Chinese culture, French feeling, and contemporary aesthetics. Shan has been exhibited at the Grand Palais Art Contemporain and a number of joint exhibitions throughout Paris, including the Centre Social et Culturel G. Brassens D'art Contemporain, and the fourth joint exhibition of the Yerres Library Association. In 2017, the Cultural Affairs Department of the French Consulate in Shanghai organised a solo exhibition for him in Shanghai and he participated in the China-Expo Capital Forum Exhibition there as well (2016). In participation with Le French May Arts Festival 2018, Alisan held the artist's premiere solo show in Hong Kong, Between Light and Shade.
Xu Jianguo | (b.1951 Shanghai) Chinese-American artist Referred to stylistically as Da Diaozi ("Hue Catcher"), Xu Jianguo has lived in New York for over thirty years. He paints the world's most recognised metropolises with the diligence of an architect, using the highly detailed Gongbi Hua techniques inherited from masters of the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties. The replacement of the traditional landscape with the modern city is the avenue by which Xu comments on the spirit of Chinese culture within the modernised, industrial and globalised world. This exhibition features two of his Hong Kong cityscapes. Xu's 8 metre-long hand scroll The New Vista of Shanghai was featured at the 2010 Shanghai Expo China Pavilion. From 2010-2013, a solo exhibition sponsored by the US Missions travelled to prominent museums in China, including the Beijing Capital Museum, Shanghai Art Museum, Guangdong Provincial Museum and National Museum of China, Beijing. Alisan held the solo show Poetic Cityscapes last year, and included his works at the Art Basel Hong Kong 2016 as well as Art 021 Shanghai 2017 and 2018. His work has been collected by Museum of Fine Arts Boston, USA.
Yang Jiechang | (b.1956 Foshan) Chinese-French artist In 1989, Yang Jiechang was chosen to participate in Magiciens de la Terre, at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, where his series “Hundred Layers of Ink” caused quite the stir at the exhibition and in the international art scene. The paintings from this series are the result of focused repetition, by which Yang applies ink daily to the same piece until the paper became completely saturated. Yang currently lives in Paris, producing an oeuvre that varies in style, medium and inspirations. He has held numerous, major exhibitions across China, Europe and the North America. Yang's paintings were included in recent major exhibitions including Beyond Ink, China Art Museum, Shanghai, 2018; Ink Worlds, The Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, 2018; Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2014. Alisan Fine Arts has held three solo exhibitions in collaboration with Le French May Art Festival, held at these venues: Museum and Art Gallery, the University of Hong Kong, 2001; Hong Kong Central Library, 2015; Alisan Central Gallery, 2017. His works have been collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rockefeller Foundation, United States; Contemporary Art Foundation of the French Cultural Centre, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hong Kong Museum of Art; M+, Hong Kong to name a few.
Wang Tiande | (b.1960 Shanghai) Burnmark ink painter Wang has been using incense sticks in lieu of brushes to "paint" for over 15 years. His paintings are composed of layered rice paper, the top sheet on which he uses incense sticks to create burn marks upon the underlying painted landscape. With each new series, he has invigorated and added new dimensions to classical landscape painting, most recently incorporating calligraphic poetry from genuine Qing Dynasty scrolls into his oeuvre. One recent work will be on display. Wang has participated in several important international exhibitions, including Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2014) and Ink Worlds at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University (2018). Seminal solo exhibitions include the Suzhou Museum (2014), The Palace Museum, Beijing (2015), and the Guangdong Museum of Art (2017). Alisan began representing Wang in 1999, and organised four solo exhibitions for him since 2003, the most recent in 2018. His works have been collected by the British Museum; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts Boston; Shanghai Art Museum; Guangdong Museum of Art; Hong Kong Museum of Art, amongst others.
Xu Lei | (b.1963 Nantong) Beijing artist Xu is internationally renowned for his meticulous and surreal paintings. He was an active member of the '85 New Wave Movement in Beijing during the 1980s. Xu currently works at the Chinese National Academy of Arts, is the art director of the Today Art Museum in Beijing, and the chief editor of Oriental Art·Classics. Trained as a Gongbi flower-and-bird painter, his iconic portrayals of horses situated in cloistered settings and scholars’ rocks have garnered him international acclaim. Though possibly anachronistic, his paintings are imbued with questions of loss, and the melancholic feelings surrounding the impermanence of time, things, and objects. A selection from his most recent Interact Mountains series will be on display at Art Basel Hong Kong. Alisan Fine Arts first began representing Xu in 1995, holding his first solo exhibition in Hong Kong that year. Titled The Mystery of Absence, the exhibition introduced Xu Lei’s dreamlike paintings, and featured his iconic subjects: classical Chinese material culture rendered in a Surrealist style. In 1997 the gallery organised a group show for Xu Lei and Yu Hui in London at the Browse & Darby gallery, his first exhibition in Europe. His works have been included in various major exhibitions, including Beyond Ink, China Art Museum, Shanghai, 2018; La Biennale di Venezia, Pavilion of China, Venice, 2010; 5000 Years of Chinese Art and Civilization, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1998. Selected museum collections: Today Art Museum, Beijing; Shanghai Art Museum, Jiangsu Art Museum, Nanjing Arts Institute.
Chu Chu | (b.1975 Hangzhou) Emerging woman artist As an accomplished ink painter, calligrapher and photographer, Chu Chu (b.1975, Hangzhou) combines elements from these three distinct disciplines in her work. The key subject matter of her work is the natural world. She is also deeply influenced by Chinese philosophies and classical texts. In her Westlake series, she pairs a photograph alongside an ink and wash painting of the same scene, applied directly with calligraphic poems. This juxtaposition presents interesting layers of meaning, with each visual language contributing to the overall composition. Chu will create new works from the West Lake series for our booth at Art Basel Hong Kong. Chu has been widely exhibited, including in France, Germany, England, the United States, Japan, Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong. She was also included in the important modern calligraphy exhibition Writing Non-writing at the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou. Alisan Fine Arts first showcased her works in three group shows Beyond the Jade Terrace (2014), The Voice of the Brush Part 2, the charity exhibition HOPE (both 2018), and have since held her first solo show in Hong Kong in 2017. We also exhibited her works in Ink Asia 2015 and Art Basel Hong Kong 2016/17 with great success.
Kassia Ko | (b.1952 Guangzhou) Emerging woman artist Ko is a full-time artist based in Hong Kong. The mindscapes from her well-known "Imprint Series" introduce meticulous techniques to conjure the brightest light and reflection, serving as an analogue to time-lapse photography, capturing the passage of time in the modern digital era. With the addition of grey tones, the minimalist landscapes convey poetic calmness and an airy expression of the locale. For Art Basel Hong Kong, we will exhibit her new work Urban Echo San Francisco which focus on the rhythm of a modern city. Ko curated her first solo ink exhibition Imprint at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre in 2014. Since then, her work has been featured at art events in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Melbourne, Singapore, London, Vancouver and St. Petersburg, as well as the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (2014), Two Cities: Hong Kong & Shenzhen 2017 Works Exhibition of Ink Painting and Metropolis, Hong Kong Central Library (2017), Hong Kong Contemporary Female Artists Exhibition, Russia (2018). Alisan Fine Arts has been exhibiting her works since 2015 and featured her in the major group shows A Legacy of Ink Lui Shou-kwan 40 Years on, Hong Kong Arts Centre (2015), and the charity exhibition HOPE (2018).
Zhang Xiaoli | (b.1989 Guizhou) Emerging woman artist Zhang presents surreal landscapes inside small containers, using the traditional style of Gongbi ink painting to depict memories and experiences. Particularly, her boxed landscapes series correlates to the “subdivided flats” housing problem in Hong Kong, which the artist experienced while studying in Hong Kong. The paintings on display are the new works completed during her graduate studies at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Zhang received a scholarship and moved to Hong Kong in 2008 to pursue higher education at Chinese University of Hong Kong, where she received her BA with first honours in Fine Arts and Biology in 2014. During the graduation show, she received YS Hui Fine Arts Award and Wucius Wong Creative Ink Painting Award. Her important exhibitions include Beijing Youth Art Biennial 2016 and Fresh Trend, Hong Kong, 2014. Her works have also been exhibited at several art fairs in New York, Brussels and Hong Kong. Alisan Fine Arts first showcased her works in the 2017 group exhibition Desiring: Post 97 Hong Kong Ink Art, and the charity exhibition HOPE this year. We also included her works at Art 021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair in 2018.
Ming Fay | (b.1943 Shanghai) Chinese-American Sculptor The sculptor, installation artist and professor Ming Fay has been based in New York for five decades. Fay is well known for his large fruit sculptures and mixed media installations. His work primarily focuses on the concept of the garden as a symbol of utopia and the relationship between people and nature. Drawing on an extensive knowledge of both Eastern and Western horticulture and mythologies, along with his close observation of personally collected items such as fruits, and seeds. This results in works that range from oversised plant forms, theatrical garden-like displays, or overgrown sci-fi inspired environments. Fay has had two major solo exhibitions in the recent years, Floating Reeds, Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai (2007), and Canutopia, Grounds for Sculpture, New Jersey (2012). He has also exhibited internationally at the Whitney Museum of American Art, National Academy Museum, New York; Łódź Biennale, Poland; Hong Kong Museum of Art. They Include New Ink Art: Innovation and Beyond curated by Alice King, Hong Kong Museum of Art (2008), Portals of Possibility, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, New York (2016), and Decolonization of Hong Kong / Art Across Archives also in New York (2018). Alisan Fine Arts began representing Fay in 1985, and since then has held three solo exhibitions for the artist. His works are in the collections of many prominent museums including the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, New Jersey; He Xiangling Art Museum, Shenzhen; Taiwan Fine Art Museum, Taichung; Hong Kong Museum of Art, as well as Mobil Oil Corporation, New York; Pittsburgh National Bank, Pittsburgh; Prudential Insurance Company, Los Angeles.
Kum Chi-keung | (b.1965 Hong Kong) Multi-media sculptor The important Hong Kong artist Kum Chi-keung is well known for using sculptural installations in the shape of birdcages to explore social, cultural and environmental issues. The mixed media work for Basel fuses moving images of modern mechanics and apes within traditional landscapes. The piece expresses Kum's ideology of human evolution, namely that man must relinquish his dependency on urban technology in order to reconnect with nature. Kum has participated in numerous important exhibitions and biennials in the US, Germany, Korea and Hong Kong. They include Inside Out: New Chinese Art, Travelling Exhibition, New York, Washington, San Francisco, Seattle; Monterrey, Mexico; Canberra, Australia; Hong Kong (1998); The New Face of Hong Kong, House of World Cultures, Berlin (1998); Eternal Tao: New Direction in Contemporary Chinese Art, Hong Kong Museum of Art (2013); 9th Seoul Fringe Festival (2006). He had solo exhibitions at Hong Kong International Art Fair (2012), Space for Lease, Hong Kong Arts Centre (2008), Flying Library, Cattle Depot Artist Village (2004). His works are collected by Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong Heritage Museum, Opposite House in Beijing, The East in Hong Kong, K11 Art Mall, Bank of China, Deutsche Bank, Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior.
