Arnold Chang & Michael Cherney, Angles 角度 #2, 2020, photography and ink on xuan paper mount on paper, 23 x 54 1/4 in. (58.4 x 137.8 cm)

Exhibited last year during Asia Week New York, Angles #2 depicts Michael Cherney’s photograph of the eroded landscape of the Loess Plateau (Mizhi county, Shaanxi province) and Arnold Chang’s distinct brushwork of a landscape that expands the dominant triangular form flowing outward in multiple directions and creating subtle tensions between the two mediums.

Chang and Cherney began collaborating in 2009 and over the years, their work has blurred the distinctions between photography and painting by harnessing the similarities between film grains and ink dots. Angles #2 is neither solely a photograph nor painting, but rather a dialogue between two artists, working in different media, embracing and reaffirming the classical aesthetics of Chinese landscape art while challenging the public's definition of shuimo 水墨 (“ink painting”).

With their deft abilities to bridge Eastern and Western aesthetics and collapse cultural binaries, Chang and Cherney stand at the forefront of the Contemporary Ink Art movement, as evidenced by this work joining The Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

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