Installation view of Robert Oxnam: Searching for Qi at Alisan Fine Arts, NYC
These are the final days of Searching for Qi, an exhibition of Robert Oxnam’s enthralling sculpture and photography at Alisan Fine Arts before it closes July 3. Throughout his work, Oxnam was preoccupied with the relationship between the parts and the whole, searching for each sculpture’s qi, or inner spirit. A quietly captivating body of work not to be missed! Then on July 9, the gallery opens 45th Anniversary: Home and Abroad, celebrating four and a half decades since Alisan Fine Arts was founded in Hong Kong in 1981, with a focus on Chinese diaspora artists from the gallery’s early years alongside a new generation of contemporary voices. Learn more below!
Robert Oxnam: Searching for Qi
Closing Friday, July 3, 2026
120 East 65th St, NYC
A scholar by training and a non-profit leader by profession, Robert Oxnam discovered his artistic practice almost by chance. Walking the beaches of the Long Island Sound, he noticed fragments of weathered wood—washed up on the shore by currents, half-buried under sand and wedged between rocks, carved from sea water, climate, and insects. Oxnam collected these gnarled, irregular shards, cleaning them to reveal a striking parallel. The wooden forms bore an uncanny resemblance to ancient Chinese scholars’ rocks—a millennium-long practice wherein scholar-officials collected unusual rocks for their studios. The custom symbolized an association of small fragments with the expansive, cosmic energy of nature.
The intent, Oxnam noted, was not to replicate the scholar stones tradition, but to seek inspiration in its conceptual metaphor. He continued to explore the close relationship of fragments to the whole, investigating this intimacy in a series of macro photographs. Capturing glacial rocks and boulders on Rocky Point Beach, he became enthralled by the finer details—a circular mark on a rock, a flash of color invisible to the naked eye, an impression filled with sea water after a wave. To Oxnam, these features were simultaneously specific and vast; as if taken from “Google Earth,” they remained minute while suggesting a natural expanse.
Searching for Qi presents these two related bodies of work: Oxnam’s driftwood sculptures, for which he was best known, and his foray into photography.
To learn more, click here.
Walasse Ting, Eight Grasshoppers in the Midst of Flowers, 1990s, 177.5 x 97 cm, Chinese ink & acrylic on rice paper
45th Anniversary: Home and Abroad
July 9 – August 28, 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 9, 6-8pm
Founded in 1981 in Hong Kong, 2026 marks the 45th anniversary of Alisan Fine Arts. To commemorate the occasion, they have organized a series of exhibitions across their various gallery locations and at art fairs under the theme of “Then and Now”.
Here at Alisan Fine Arts New York, their focus will be on the Chinese Diaspora artists with whom they’ve worked since the gallery’s early years, alongside a new generation of contemporary artists.
Organized into three galleries, the exhibition centers on three themes: Reinventing Tradition, featuring the work of Lui Shou-Kwan, Wucius Wong, Yang Jiechang and Yang Yanping; New York, featuring the work of Walasse Ting, Ming Fay, Chinyee; and Home and Abroad, featuring artists Chu Chu, Summer Lee, Justin Lim, Yifan Jiang, Jia Sung, and Kelly Wang.
They look forward to celebrating with you soon!
To learn more, click here.