Buddha Head, Gandhara, 4th century, gray schist

Dhanvantari's Blessing, Kapoor Galleries
March 14-25, 2022
Opening party: Wednesday, March 16, 5-8pm

Kapoor Galleries presents Dhanvantari’s Blessing for Asia Week New York 2022. Highlights of the exhibition include a delicately rendered Company School painting of a great Indian fruit bat; an illustration from the “large” Guler-Basohli Bhagavata Purana series by the first generation after Manaku and Nainsukh; a splendid Mughal khanjar with bejewelled jade hilt; and two vibrant paintings from a unique Nepalese Bhagavata Purana series.

The gallery exhibition will consist of the aforementioned highlights, along with many fine Indian miniature paintings and arms as well, as a carefully-curated selection of sculptures from India, Nepal, and Tibet. A virtual exhibition space will display all of the additional Indian and Himalayan artworks contained within our 2022 catalog, Dhanvantari’s Blessing.

First generation after Manaku and Nainsukh, An illustration from the “large” Guler-Basohli Bhagavata Purana series: Satadhanva, Akrura and Kratvarma in discussion, Punjab Hills, ca. 1760-65, opaque pigments heightened with gold on paper

When not visiting Kapoor Galleries in person, their website has a wealth of engaging virtual exhibitions to enjoy. To visit these online shows, click here. For more information about the gallery, click here.

Bronze Taotie Mask with Ring Handle, Northern Wei Dynasty, 4th-5th century

The Ancients Among Us: Chinese and Japanese Paintings and Works of Art, Kaikodo LLC
Online exhibition, March 15-25

The Ancients Among Us includes works focusing on characters drawn from antiquity, whether historically real, legendary, or figments of an imagination. A human figure mysteriously appears seated dead-center in the forehead of an otherwise typical gilt-bronze taotie mask. A dignified slender-bodied military official represents his class in a sculptural style and garb typical of the early 6th century while an aristocratic couple in kaleidoscopic color lounge on the lid of a kogo incense container, fashioned by the inimitable Nonomura Ninsei in 17th century Kyoto. Actual historical figures are immortalized in such painted images as that of the illustrious Zen monk Tōran Sōtaku, a contemporary of Ninsei and another of a Manchu noblewoman majestically sitting for her portrait in opulent formal attire. Writhing dragons on a late Zhou dynasty garment hook and a tiger captured in ink and color on silk, by a painter working centuries later, have lorded over the East and the West from time immemorial, their claim to antiquity without peer. And, finally, artists and craftsmen who have slipped into eternity are among us today through their enduring creations in all manner of media, a number of them represented in the exhibition.

Tachibana Shoun, Tiger in Landscape, ink and color on silk

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Blanket from Zhuang Tribal, early 20th century, silk supplementary weft on a fine cotton tabby ground, 45 x 67 in., Collection of Chinalai Tribal Antiques

Auspicious Dreams: Tribal Blankets from Southern China
Charles B. Wang Center Stony Brook University
March 9-May 31, 2022
Lecture: Tribal Blankets of South China: Power, Protection, & Prestige
Wednesday, March 9, 4pm
Reception: Wednesday, March 9, 5pm

The Charles B. Wang Center celebrates precious, rarely seen Chinese textiles, specifically blankets made by South and Southwest Chinese tribes in Auspicious Dreams: Tribal Blankets from Southern China exhibition. Often made with fine materials, exemplary techniques, and unparalleled artistry, these striking textiles convey the unique identities, statuses, and traditions of diverse Chinese tribal groups.

Curated by Vichai and Lee Chinalai of Chinalai Tribal Antiques and Jinyoung Jin, director of cultural programs at the Charles B. Wang Center, the treasures in this exhibition take visitors on a remarkable journey across regions and time.

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Kubo Shunman (1757‒1820), A Pipe and Decorative Tobacco Pouch with Ojime Bead and Manju Netsuke, 1813, color woodblock print with metallic pigments: shikishiban surimono

Privately Commissioned Japanese Prints and Albums from the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries, Sebastian Izzard Asian Art LLC
March 18-26, 2022

The spring exhibition at Sebastian Izzard Asian Art LLC will feature surimono, the privately commissioned counterparts to the commercial Japanese woodblock prints of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Produced in small numbers for a mostly educated audience of literati, surimono were often more experimental in subject matter and treatment, and extravagant in printing technique, than commercial prints. Two artistic groups dominated surimono production: the group of artists led by Katsushika Hokusai (1760‒1849) and his school, including Totoya Hokkei (1780‒1850) and Yashima Gakutei (1786‒1868), who specialized in still-life, landscape, and illustrations of classical Chinese and Japanese literature; and the artists led by Utagawa Toyokuni (1769‒1825)—and after his death in 1825 by Utagawa Kunisada (1786‒1865)—who became known for images of the theater and its performers. Fine examples by these artists as well as other renowned painters including Kitagawa Utamaro (1756‒1806) and Kubo Shunman (1757–1820) are featured.

Utagawa Kunisada (1786‒1865), Ichikawa Danjūrō VII as Endō Musha Morichika, color woodblock print with silver and bronze metallic pigments: shikishiban surimono

Unlike commercial publishing, cost was not a primary consideration in the production of surimono. Only the finest quality paper was employed. Skilled artisans cut highly refined and complex matrices of blocks which craftsmen worked with new and inventive procedures and materials. The shikishiban, or square paper shape, soon became the format of choice among the many ukiyo-e artists hired to design surimono.

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Ken Matsubara, Chaos (detail), 2021, 12-panel screen, natural pigments and minerals on washi paper

Chaos to Cosmos: White Road between Two Rivers, Exhibition by Ken Matsubara, Ippodo Gallery
March 10-April 14, 2022
Opening reception: March 16, 5-8pm

A retrospective of artist Ken Matsubara's (born 1948, Kamiimachi, Toyama prefecture) works thus far. The echo of the wind, the sound of water, a full moon floating in a mysterious blue sky, the cries of wild beasts that agitate the ripples of the lake…Ken Matsubara’s works present a view of the universe that is magnificent beyond description. For him, the act of drawing is to resonate with nature itself.

Chaos is Matsubara’s interpretation of a Buddhist painting entitled Niga Byakudō-zu [White Path to Paradise between Two Rivers of Worldly Vice], that he first saw at Zendōji temple in Gifu Prefecture when he was nine years old, and which had remained firmly etched upon his memory. In order to find the white road, it is necessary to possess a pure heart and cast aside the sediment of life that has built up inside one’s soul, otherwise it will be impossible to pass along this narrow white road that runs between the river of water, (attachments and greed) and the river of fire (anger and hatred). It was with this in mind that he confronted the twelve panels that comprise this work, a masterpiece through which he prayed for tranquility and purged himself of all the chaos that had accumulated within him. Like Picasso’s Guernica, it presents a tempestuous maelstrom of emotions and raging flames, but in between these, an indistinct, cloud-like, pure, white road emerges.

Ken Matsubara, Chaos, 2021, 12-panel screen, natural pigments and minerals on washi paper,
433 x 70.86 in. (1100 x 180 cm.)

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Elaine Ildan Choi, Here and Now, Korean Cultural Center New York
YouTube Premier, March 8
A Part of The Master's Atelier Series

The Korean Cultural Center New York sheds light on the life and art of artist Elaine Ildan Choi (b. 1936), in a special documentary and online exhibition that features not only her selected artworks, but the story of her turbulent life and fierce spirit that has remained a constant thread throughout. The video will be unveiled on March 8th, 2022 to commemorate International Women’s Day and also as a part of Asia Week New York 2022.

The mini documentary follows her life spanning more than 80 years as she navigates through the tumultuous times from the Japanese occupation of Korea, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, and as she builds her life around the world starting from Seoul, Korea to Paris, Beijing, and finally to New York.

Known master of Korean traditional ink paintings and a close mentor to Elaine Ildan Choi at Seoul National University, artist Chang Woo-Sung (pen name: Wol-Chun), compared her spirit to the passionate madness of the Qing Dynasty monk-artist, Zhudab, who had famously said “Nothing can be achieved without madness.” Choi’s life is undeniably an embodiment of “passion” itself.

In this exhibition and documentary, her long-time Manhattan apartment that acts as her studio and living space is unveiled to the public for the first time. Her living, breathing apartment is a self-portrait of Choi herself as it densely contains the layers of her nuanced and complex world and her free-spirited passion strewed across genres of painting, sculpture, textile, pottery, and installation works.

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Bingyi, White Clouds and Dark Beasts 《白云苍狗》, 2021, ink on xuan paper

Bingyi: Land of Immortals, INKstudio
March 16-25
Exhibiting at:
Joan B. Mirviss Ltd
39 East 78th Street

Bingyi will premier new ink paintings from her site-specific Taihang Mountains series in which she explores the Northern Song landscape tradition.

An artist, architectural designer, curator, cultural critic, and social activist,
Bingyi (冰 逸, b. 1975, Beijing) has developed a multi-faceted practice that encompasses land and environmental art, site-specific architectural installation, musical and literary composition, ink painting, performance art, and filmmaking. Adopting a non-anthropocentric perspective and channeling nature’s creative agency, her work is centrally concerned with the themes of ecology, ruins, rebirth, and poetic imagination. After pursuing university-level studies in biomedical and electronic engineering in the United States, Bingyi earned a Ph.D. in Art History and Archeology from Yale University in 2005 with a dissertation on the art of the Han Dynasty.

This exhibition will be displayed in tandem with Kondō Takahiro: Making Waves at Joan B Mirviss LTD.

Bingyi, Sea of Stars, 2021, ink on xuan paper

INKstudio, founded in 2012 by Craig Yee and Christopher Reynolds and located in Beijing and New York, is an art gallery with the mission to present Chinese experimental ink as a distinctive contribution to contemporary transnational art-making in a closely-curated exhibition program supported by in-depth critical analysis, scholarly exchange, bilingual publishing, and multimedia production. INKstudio's program encompasses Postwar and contemporary artists from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea and Japan. Dr. Britta Erickson, INK Studio’s Artistic Director and an independent scholar and curator living in Palo Alto, drives all aspects of its programming and scholarly activities. Based in New York, Mee-Seen Loong joined INKstudio as director in 2018 after a long and distinguished career at Sotheby’s, where she spearheaded many new initiatives in the field of Contemporary Ink.

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Anonymous (Late 19th century), Three Deities, ink and color on silk

Korean Paintings and Sculptures: Past and Present
HK Art and Antiques LLC
March 17-April 6

This Asia Week season, HK Art and Antiques presents an exceptional array of traditional and contemporary Korean paintings and sculptures. Based in New York since 2015, this gallery, under the direction of Heakyum Kim, is one of the foremost sources for fine Korean art.

Wonsook Kim (b. 1953), Shadow a Bird, 2006, bronze

One of the highpoints of the exhibition is this bronze sculpture called Shadow of a Bird, by contemporary artist Wonsook Kim, who was born in Busan in 1953 and now lives in Illinois. She is known for story-based figurative paintings and sculptures that are poetic and ethereal in their fluid execution and mythical subject matter.

Henri Vever Papers, FSA.A1988.04, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives,
Gift of François Mautin, 1988

Sneak Peek—The Other Gems: Henri Vever’s Persian Painting Collection
National Museum of Asian Art
Online program, Tuesday, March 8 at 12pm

A celebrated jeweler, a skilled draftsman, an avid bibliophile, and a devoted sportsman, Henri Vever (1854–1942) also amassed one of the most significant collections of Persian and Indian paintings, which is housed today in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the National Museum of Asian Art. By the time Vever became fascinated with Persian and Indian arts of the book in the early 1890s, he had already collected and sold an impressive group of Impressionist paintings and was enthusiastically collecting Japanese prints. Drawing on contemporaneous historical sources, including Vever’s own diaries and ledgers, this presentation will consider the jeweler’s career in fin de siècle Paris and the formation of one of the most outstanding holdings of Persian manuscripts and paintings in the early twentieth century.

This talk is part of the monthly lunchtime series Sneak Peek: New Research from the National Museum of Asian Art, where staff members present brief, personal perspectives and ongoing research, followed by discussion. In 2022, the series will focus on collecting practices and the collections of the National Museum of Asian Art.

Massumeh Farhad is The Ebrahimi Family Curator of Persian, Arab, and Turkish Art, Chief Curator, and the Senior Associate Director for Research. She is a specialist in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century arts of the book from Iran.

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Sacred Screens and Scrolls: Decoding Buddhist Symbols in Shikō Munakata’s Prints, Japan Society
Online program, March 8 at 6pm

In this virtual walkthrough of Shikō Munakata: A Way of Seeing, D. Max Moerman, professor and chair of Asian & Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard College, delves into the artist’s rich Buddhist roots, unveiling key philosophies, motifs and figures at the heart of Munakata’s oeuvre. In conversation with Japan Society’s Chief Program Officer Ramona Handel-Bajema, Ph.D., Moerman discusses the religious significance of works such as Eulogy to Shōkei (1945), a six-panel screen containing 24 individual prints, and The Ten Great Disciples of Buddha (1939/1948), a set of 12 expressive, black-and-white hanging scrolls, as well as several calligraphic works.

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