NEWLY OPENED EXHIBITION:
Transcultural Dialogues: The Journey of East Asian Art to the West
July 11 – September 14, 2024
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 18th, 5-8pm
Rotations: July 11–August 10 & August 13–September 14
We are delighted to present our summer group exhibition Transcultural Dialogues: The Journey of East Asian Art to the West, which explores the artistic evolution of East Asian traditions as they spread to the Western art milieu, focusing on the exchange and interaction of visual language and conceptual frameworks between traditional ink art and modern American art. Primarily focused on Chinese art, the show spans from the early 17th through the 20th centuries and into contemporary times, highlighting the early modernity and abstract quality of traditional ink masters alongside the reinterpretation of literati painting by diasporic Chinese artists who engaged with American Abstract Expressionism and explored notions of abstraction.
This exhibition draws inspiration from a 1997 touring exhibition, Asian Tradition / Modern Expressions: Asian American Artists and Abstraction, 1945-1970, organized by the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University and curated by Jeffrey Wechsler. It showcased the achievements of Asian American artists in backdrop of the increasing significance of abstract art in mid-20th-century America. It highlighted how Asian American artists creatively fused Eastern and Western art using traditional East Asian techniques and philosophies. Drawing from the rich artistic traditions of China, Japan, and Korea, these artists discovered ideas and techniques that prefigured Western abstract models and applied them during the era of abstract expressionism. Indeed, as a group, they represented a true merging of early Asian and modern Western concepts of art and abstraction, and a knowledgeable blending of Asian and Western aesthetics.
On view from July 11th to September 14th, 2024, Transcultural Dialogues: The Journey of East Asian Art to the West will present two rotations and include works by more than 15 artists. The first rotation opens on July 11th and with a reception on July 18th from 5 pm to 8 pm, and the second rotation starts on August 13th. Concurrently, a complementary exhibition, Asian-American Abstraction: Historic to Contemporary, will be presented at Hollis Taggart in Chelsea.
To learn more, click here.
RECENTLY CLOSED EXHIBITION:
The Mountains Show and Hide: Color in the Landscape Paintings of Arnold Chang
April 25 – June 22, 2024
Rotations: April 25–May 25 & May 28–June 22
Artist Talk and Demonstration: Sunday, May 26 at 10:30am
Artist Dialogue with Xian Fang: Sunday, June 16 at 10:30am
We are delighted to present The Mountains Show and Hide: Color in the Landscape Paintings of Arnold Chang, the first solo exhibition of Arnold Chang (張洪) in New York since 1996. While Chang in his fifty-year career as an artist has painted ink landscapes in the traditional Chinese literati manner, this exhibition, showcasing Chang’s landscape paintings of the past ten years, marks his newly developed approach of seamlessly integrating color into his personal vision of landscape. The exhibition is curated by Joy Xiao Chen, Ph.D. candidate in Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles and the former Sylvan C. Coleman and Pam Coleman Memorial Fund Fellow in the Department of Asian Art from 2021 to 2023 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
In contrast to most classical Chinese literati paintings, where color was often an afterthought that followed the forms realized through ink lines and washes, Chang treats ink lines and flat color washes as separate components. In this new series as featured in Autumn Landscape (2023.02) and Landscape (2023.11), he utilizes the juxtaposition of blocks of colors to differentiate the faces of bulbous, multi-faceted mountain forms. With a purposeful blend of trees and plants that guides the viewer’s eye, the audience is invited into a trek across uncertainty, excitement, and meditation all conveyed through a juxtaposition of color patterns combined with the artist’s signature mode of subtle brushwork that resonates with the old masters. Here, color works in tandem with ink to create majestic peaks that resonate harmoniously but somewhat independently of each other. It is a creative and original approach that has evolved naturally out of Chang’s deepening knowledge of color in Chinese art history and his mature understanding of aesthetic principles, traditional and modern, Chinese and western. With the incorporation of color into landscape painting, Chang further challenges and helps to redefine Chinese art in the contemporary era.
There will be two rotations throughout the exhibition run with the first one on view from April 25th through May 25th, and the second one on view from May 28th through June 22nd, 2024. An insightful artist’s dialogue with the exhibition curator followed by the artist’s demonstration is planned for 10:30am on May 26th, 2024, and the other conversation with Xian Fang, the former Head of Sales and Vice President in Classical Chinese Paintings Department at Sotheby’s New York, who has been working with Chang for over a decade, about the history of the classical Chinese paintings market in New York, will take place at 10:30am on June 16th, 2024.
To learn more and read the full exhibition essay, click here.
RELATED NEWS
Artnet Interview: “7 Questions for Curator Joy Xiao Chen and Artist Arnold Chang” on FQM current exhibition The Mountains Show and Hide
In this conversation, Joy Xiao Chen and Arnold Chang discuss the issues of traditional ink mediums and their materiality in Chinese art history, cultural identities, and the changing perception of Chinese aesthetics in the global art world.
Click here to read the full article.
