ONGOING ASIA WEEK NEW YORK EXHIBITION
Reconstructed Realities: Gu Gan, Lee Chun-yi, Wucius Wong
March 6 – April 26, 2025
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 6 from 6-8pm
Special Asia Week Reception: Thursday, March 13 from 6-8pm
Asia Week Hours, 10am-6pm, daily
We are excited to present Reconstructed Realities, featuring the work of Gu Gan, Lee Chun-Yi, and Wucius Wong. True pioneers of ink art, these three artists took radical approaches to traditional styles of calligraphy, composition and methodology in their work. Their practices have been instrumental in bringing the ink tradition into the global contemporary art conversation.
Born in 1942 in Changsha, Gu Gan is considered the forefather of the modern calligraphy movement, and he was the founder of the Modernist School of Chinese Calligraphy. Influenced by Modern European artists, especially Kandinsky, Klee and Miró, Gu Gan came to believe that there were a number of ways in which Chinese calligraphy could be revitalized, and by the late 1970s he began to adopt a more radical approach to calligraphy.
Gu started experimenting with changes in the outer shape of individual characters by elongating or widening them into new forms. He would blend multiple characters, reconstructing them into a new form, or took the characters apart, spreading their constituent elements across his compositions. In addition, he would write each of these elements in a different script. The result has been an ongoing series of multi-layered works where the title reveals the theme, and that thematic word or phrase becomes an integral part of the composition. Our exhibition will include several works from the 1990s, and a stunning, rare piece executed in deep red and orange hues from 2003 called Red Autumn.
Trained in traditional Chinese ink painting, Lee Chun-Yi nevertheless eschews the brush, and instead reconstructs traditional imagery through the use of hand-carved seals. Lee’s passion for Chinese seals and ink rubbing led to this revolutionary technique, in which he carves sticks of soft woods, or sometimes cork, to become small seals. By controlling the pressure applied on paper and the amount of ink or pigment on the stamp, images can be composed one tile at a time, with nuances within the work expressed through repetitive stamping at various levels of strength. Featured in this exhibition are mist-laden mountain-scapes from Lee’s Heart Sutra Landscape series, along with two pieces from his new Blossoms series, showcasing his recent foray into color through the use of Japanese mineral pigments.
Lee’s artworks, whether colorful flowers or landscapes reminiscent of the Northern Song style, disintegrate into tiny tiles at close look. According to the artist, this grid configuration can be interpreted as a metaphor for the current disunity of his homeland China. In artistic terms, the shift between a macroscopically realist image to a microscopically abstract image, that is, as one draws closer to Lee’s canvases, allows the audience to visualize the interdependency between singularity and variations.
Wucius Wong’s work also employs grid-like structures, but in a completely different manner. Renowned for his analytical prowess, Wong adeptly transforms his serene natural landscapes into striking geometric compositions. His artistic process involves a detailed deconstruction of conventional landscape motifs, unveiling the intricate geometric frameworks that lie hidden beneath their surface.
Upon viewing his work, it quickly becomes apparent that Wong’s landscapes are not mere representations of nature; they are compositions where the natural world is reimagined through a lens of geometric abstraction. A good example of this is Distant Thoughts 23, where mountains and rivers are transformed into a series of shapes and lines, aligning with a rigorous, almost mathematical, aesthetic. Wong’s topological sublimation of nature reveals an inner structure to his compositions; this approach is a departure from traditional Chinese landscape painting, where nature is often depicted as a harmonious, organic representation. In his work Purification 15, a river flows along the crevices of stark, geometric forms, highlighting a tension between the fluid and the structured, the organic and the constructed. Wong’s water-themed paintings often explore these dualities, balancing them in a way that is both visually striking and emotionally resonant.
To learn more, click here.
PAST ART FAIR
Dallas Art Fair
April 10 – 13, 2025
Preview Party: Thursday, April 10 from 5-9pm (Tickets required)
Booth C11
Fashion Industry Gallery, 1807 Ross Avenue, Dallas, TX
We are excited to exhibit the work of six Asian Diasporic artists for the 2025 Dallas Art Fair: Julie Chang, Mimi Chen Ting, Fu Xiaotong, Myeongsoo Kim, Ren Light Pan, and Kelly Wang.
Julie Chang is a San Francisco based artist whose work investigates how identities are constructed and how (mis) understandings of both self and other might be resisted, subverted, and reimagined. Her paintings use ancient and contemporary cultural symbols to make visible hidden histories and illustrate the cultural hybridity inherent in the world.
Ren Light Pan is a Chinese American transgender artist living and working in New York. Her work engages with biographical issues dealing with hybridized and transgressive cultural and gender identities. Working between Eastern and Western art history, her use of traditional Chinese ink against modes of contemporary painting—namely readymade or anti-gestures, deconstruction as well as techniques influenced by photographic, filmic and printmaking processes—opened a space for contentious harmony.
Kelly Wang combines contemporary and traditional materials and approaches to create paintings, sculptures, and works that exist somewhere between two and three dimensions. Wang has been exposed to Chinese art since early childhood, and has been studying calligraphy and traditional Chinese painting since 2010 while developing her own contemporary artistic practice.
Myeongsoo Kim is a photographer and sculptor based in Brooklyn, NY. He received his BFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2009, and his MFA in Sculpture from Yale University in 2011. Recent exhibitions include Space City: Art in the Age of Artemis at the Asia Society Houston in 2024; in the 2019 BRIC in Brooklyn, NY, and the Brave New World Photo Festival at the Seoul Museum of Art in Seoul, Korea.
Mimi Chen Ting (1946-2022), was a Chinese-American painter, printmaker, and performance artist whose high-spirited practice fused Eastern and Western aesthetics. She was active in the artist communities of the Bay Area of San Francisco, CA, and Taos, NM.
Fu Xiaotong is known for her intricate paper pinhole creations of “traditional” landscape compositions. She graduated from the Oil Painting Department of the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in 2000 and later obtained a Master’s degree in Experimental Art from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 2013. Fu currently teaches at the School of Arts at North China University of Technology and resides in Germany.
To learn more about the fair, click here.
About the Gallery
Alisan Fine Arts, a stalwart of the Hong Kong art scene since its establishment in 1981, is excited to have opened our new gallery location in New York City’s Upper East Side on November 30th, 2023. Known for its dedication to Chinese diaspora artists and contemporary Chinese ink art, we continue our legacy of bridging East and West with this exciting expansion and bringing a piece of Hong Kong’s art history to a new audience while continuing to honor the artists that have shaped our legacy.
As we open our first location in the US, the gallery is committed to working with Chinese American and other Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) artists, continuing our mission of promoting cross-cultural dialogue and fostering a global appreciation for diverse artistic expressions. The gallery’s New York venture provides a unique platform for showcasing the richness of Chinese diaspora artistry, with a special focus on artists who have made significant contributions to both their heritage culture and the American art scene.
The New York City location aims to bring these conversations to a broader audience and create a space where Asian art can further dialogue with international trends and movements. The gallery will be headed up by Daniel Chen, previously the director of Chambers Fine Art. “I am thrilled to be a part of this new chapter for Alisan Fine Arts,” says Chen. “This is a gallery that has been at the forefront of Asian art for over 40 years, and it’s exciting to be able to broaden its legacy here in the center of the contemporary art world.”
Co-founded in the 1980s by Alice King, Alisan Fine Arts is one of the first professionally run galleries in Hong Kong and has been a pioneer in the field of Chinese contemporary art and new ink art, in particular, focusing on promoting mainland Chinese artists as well as established Hong Kong and Chinese diaspora artists.
We currently manage three premises, one in the upper east side of New York City, one in Hong Kong’s central business district and one in Aberdeen, Hong Kong’s southside.