Alisan Fine Arts is pleased to participate the West Bund Art & Design for the first time. Our booth showcases seven diaspora artists and their internationally influenced works. Chao Chung-hsiang, Walasse Ting, John Way, Lan Zhenghui, Liu Jian and Yang Qi are Chinese-born artists who immigrated outside of China to find their styles influenced by the Western practices and movements in Europe and America. In contrast, French-born painter Fabienne Verdier had the unique experience of leaving her homeland to spend several years in Sichuan, China learning the traditional art of calligraphy, which now serves as the creative catalyst for her famous "calligraphic paintings." When it comes to a particular piece of art, we tend to analytically assign a category such as "Chinese" or "American," yet, like the artists who create them, the reality of nationality and categories is quite complex and resistant to rigid classification. This space reminds us that art is not bound by classifications, and that enjoyment requires us to relax and enjoy the art that exists between geographical borders.
The First Generation of Chinese Artists to Live Abroad in 1950s Chao Chung-hsiang (1910-1991)
Like Zao Wou-Ki, Chu Teh-chun and Wu Guanzhong, Chao, a student of Lin Fungmian at the National Institute of Art, Hangzhou (currently the China Academy of Art) immigrated to New York in 1958 at the height of the American Abstract Expressionist movement. His paintings of birds and flowers mixed with bold splashes and drippings of bright colours successfully combine his Eastern philosophy referencing Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, and background in traditional ink with the action painting of Western Abstraction. After more than thirty years in New York, he moved to Hong Kong in 1989, then to Chengdu, and finally to Taiwan where he passed away at the age of 81.
Representing the artist's estate, Alisan has organised several large-scale travelling exhibitions for Chao since 1992, including 2000 at Zhejiang West Lake Art Museum; 2004 at National Art Museum of China, Beijing and Shanghai Art Museum. Selected collections: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; National Art Museum of China, Beijing; Shanghai Art Museum; Zhejiang Westlake Art Museum, Hangzhou; Taipei Fine Arts Museum; Hong Kong Museum of Art, and M+, Hong Kong.
Walasse Ting (1928-2010)
Self-named the "Flower Thief," Ting is celebrated for his signature, splashy and colourful depictions of sultry women. He was born in Wuxi, left for Paris at the young age of 19, and eventually settled in New York to develop his artistic career. There, Ting befriended experimental artists Karel Appel, Pierre Alechensky, Sam Francis, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Joan Mitchell. Strongly influenced by the avant-garde movements in New York, particularly Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, Walasse Ting experimented with brush and ink, developing the distinctive style that we are so familiar with today. Subjects other than beauties like horse, cats, flowers and fruits, are all expressing his resplendent testimony to love, life and beauty.
Alisan organised Ting’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong in 1986 and has been representing his works for over thirty years. We have held eleven solo shows for him, including at Hong Kong Arts Centre in 2010 and Le French May 2017. Musée Cernuschi in Paris held his first large scale exhibition in the same time, while Taipei Fine Arts Museum held a retrospective in 2010. Selected collections: 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.
John Way (1921-2012)
Chinese name Wei Letang, was known for his bold paintings that combine layers of colours inspired by Chinese calligraphy and Abstract Expressionist painting. He studied art and calligraphy in China before immigrating to Boston in 1956, where he furthered his arts education with instruction in design at MIT. His late work is characterised by brushy, bold black strokes set against drippy background textures of two or three colors, are similar to the large gestural works of painters like Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline. A major catalogue was published for his retrospective in 2001 at Shanghai Art Museum. In 2006, an exhibition of his calligraphy and oil paintings were on show at the Honolulu Academy of Arts in Hawaii, and a 90-Year Retrospective in Beijing 2010. Alisan Fine Arts has organised three John Way solo exhibitions (2001, 2003 and 2006) and exhibited his work at Fine Art Asia in 2015. His works have been exhibited in over forty solo and group shows around the world, including in the United States, France, Switzerland, Germany, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Selected collections: Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco; Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena; Hong Kong Museum of Art.
Contemporary Abstract Landscape
Liu Jian (b. 1961 Shanghai)
Liu was one of the few students accepted to attend the Beijing People’s Army Art College in 1979 when he was only eighteen. At twenty-four, he was made life-time resident of the Traditional Chinese Painting Academy, Shanghai, and began teaching thereafter. There he met and worked with many prolific painters, and learned first-hand both Northern and Southern styles of traditional Chinese art. A photograph from the artist’s study shows Liu Jian as a young man addressing a group of elderly masters including Wu Guanzhong and Ye Qianyu. After several major shows across France, Germany, and Italy, the artist eventually settled in Canada in 1990. Liu’s works incorporated broad swathes of colour and texture, mainly oil on canvas depicting abstract landscape, and were undoubtedly influenced by Western abstract artists such as Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko and Joseph Beuys. In recent years, he creates both oil paintings and Chinese ink paintings which style is dream-like and almost monochrome but full of expressive brush strokes dissolved in the abstract landscape.
Alisan Fine Arts first showed his works in 1987 as part of the landmark exhibition A State of Transition: Contemporary Paintings from Shanghai. Since then Alisan has held four solo exhibitions for the artist. Over the years he has had numerous solo exhibitions in Europe, North America and Hong Kong. In 2016 we had a joint exhibition for him and Zhang Yu, raising a question "Is it Ink Art," a topic heavily debated in recent years. Selected collections: Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto; Prince Haik, Austria; Grand Hyatt Taipei; Hong Kong Museum of Art; American Club; Bank of China; Exxon Energy Ltd., Hong Kong.
First foreign women to attend Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 1980s
Fabienne Verdier (b. 1962 Paris)
Acclaimed French female painter in abstract art is notable in contemporary Europe for her calligraphic brush creations. Fabienne was graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts de Toulouse in 1983. In the following year, she became one of the first foreign women to attend the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in Chongqing, where she determindly convinced the calligraphy master Huang Yuan to instruct her in the ancient craft. In 1989, in recognition of her accomplishments in calligraphy she was made a member of the National Calligraphers’ Association, the only foreign member, and invited the following year to take part in an international calligraphy exhibition at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing. After returning to France in 1992, she merged the aesthetics of Chinese calligraphy with Western abstract expression techniques, using a self-made Chinese brush hanging from the studio ceiling to create her energetic "Calligraphic-paintings." Her large-scale works full of power and emotion. As Fabienne said, "A few touches of black ink break the silence and suggest possible changes to reality. The soul of the painter delights in blending in with the elements to suddenly evoke the universe before our eyes."
Alisan Fine Arts has represented Fabienne since 2014 and held her solo exhibition of Le French May in the same year. She was also included in the gallery’s group show at Art Basel Hong Kong 2014 and at Ink Asia in 2015. Selected collections: Musée National d’Art Moderne Centre Pompidou; Musée Cernuschi; Palais de l’Assemblée Nationale; Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Paris; Chinese Ministry of Culture, Beijing; Honda Group, Tokyo, Japan.
Zen with German Expressionism
Yang Qi (b. 1952, Wuhan)
A multi-media artist working living in Germany, is notable for his concept of "Zen with German Expressionism". He received a Bachelor of Arts at Normal University Anhui, China before immigrating to Germany in 1987, where he obtained a Doctorate of Art Philosophy at the University of Heidelberg in 1996. He intertwines the artistic traditions of his cultural Chinese past with the modernist Western style he encountered in Europe, with emphasis on the emotions of lines, colours, composition and technique. His ink paintings and ceramic works are generally composed of a few simple brushstrokes and colours but are full of philosophical thinking.
He has had more than fifty solo exhibitions in China, Germany, Switzerland, England, and the Netherlands, with his first solo exhibition within China at National Art Museum of China, Beijing (2005). Earlier this year, his paintings and ceramics were displayed at Wutong Art Museum in Shanghai, and in 2012 his acclaimed solo show Homeland was held at Shanghai's Duolun Museum of Modern Art. Alisan has been representing Yang since 2010 and held his first solo exhibition in Hong Kong in 2017, as well as included him in Art Basel Hong Kong 2015 with much success. Selected collections: British Museum; Linden Museum, Stuttgart; International Collection of Art SAP, Walldorf; Art Collection of Cial Bank, Zurich; Art Foundation La Roche, Basel; China Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou; Zhu Qizhan Art Museum, Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai.
