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Exhibition

Using an old medium to create new effects

1
2016-04-26 09:54China Daily Editor: Li Yan
A visitor looks at Chimeric Landscape, an installation by Zheng, during the ongoing Hong Kong show. (Photo provided to China Daily)

A visitor looks at Chimeric Landscape, an installation by Zheng, during the ongoing Hong Kong show. (Photo provided to China Daily)

When accessing ink artist Zheng Chongbin's website, you see an animated front page on which ink is poured over a sheet of white paper, achieving the three-dimensional effect of Chinese ink-and-wash painting.

For four decades, the Chinese-American artist, 55, who divides his time between his native Shanghai and California, has used ink as his main object to create art. But he was not satisfied with limiting his vision to ink merely as a painting material.

His current solo exhibition, Zheng Chongbin: Structures, at a Sotheby's space in Hong Kong shows how he has gone beyond classical Chinese ink art, pushing its boundaries.

In his abstract ink paintings, Zheng uses white acrylic paint and creates an uneven surface on a piece of paper, engaging ink in a play of light and space.

Zheng was trained in a traditional way: He learned calligraphy in childhood and was imparted the discipline of classical Chinese painting in his college, China Academy of Art, in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang province.

"It is a process in which one gets to understand how to control oneself and then how to let go," he says.

"When one is able to achieve that state, the inner feelings and the external embodiment of consciousness finally fuse together," he adds.

After graduation he joined the teaching staff of his alma mater and began experimenting with ink art. He first got rid of the traditionally delicate, detailed lines he had perfected for years, looking instead for an abstract presentation that emphasized how the texture and the structure of ink could vary.

Looking for more breakthroughs, Zheng then went to San Francisco Art Institute in the late 1980s, when he began studying performance art, installations and video.

The Californian sunlight and the "light and space" movement of the 1970s both influenced him greatly, enabling him to introduce the exploration of light and space in his ink creations.

"I found a different world, a different relationship, an energy and a form of language," he says.

The transition let him connect the two cultures.

"It is just like connecting the positive and negative poles of an electrode. The power it generates can light up everything so that people can feel and see the meaning of culture."

He then returned to ink art. And he has extended the power of ink from paper to video and installations.

Chimeric Landscape, a video installation at the Hong Kong show executed over 2014-15, explores the "whole cycle of living, entropy and regeneration" of ink.

He says for him, ink is not just a material but also a living body.

"It represents energy, light, space and movement. It is time. It has so many possibilities that it makes me think about the phenomenon and our perception."

As ink art evolves, Zheng believes it requires artists to devote their lives to exploring it further. And, he says people should no longer perceive ink art in the context of historical traditions because only by doing so "will we not get lost in the mist of certain doctrines or mannerisms".

If you go

10 a.m.-6 p.m., Monday to Friday; 11 a.m.-5 p.m. on Saturday; through May 3.

Sotheby's Hong Kong Gallery, 5/F One Pacific Place, 88 Queensway.

852-2822-5566.

  

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