UPCOMING EXHIBITION
Word Play: New York
November 23 – December 21, 2024
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 23, 2024, from 2-4pm
We are pleased to present Word Play: New York, a companion exhibition to our current exhibition at our Central Hong Kong location. Centered around the expression, investigation and deconstruction of Chinese characters, we will feature works by 6 artists across different generations: Cui Fei, Hung Keung, Chiu Li, Wang Dongling, Wang Tiande and Wei Ligang. The written word – long considered the essence of Chinese culture – continues to serve as the point of departure for both faithful emulation and radical innovation in contemporary art.
Based in New York, Cui Fei is well known for her work that uses natural materials (thorns, grape vine tendrils) to emulate calligraphic writing. Hong Kong-based Hung Keung is known for his interactive installations that integrate film, video and digital new media with classical Chinese themes of philosophy, art and literature, with innovative installations that employ imagery of Chinese characters, ink, rice paper, and flowers. Born in Hong Kong, Chiu Li’s work blends Western design principles with traditional Chinese aesthetics, exploring the intersections of painting, calligraphy, and poetry. Wang Dongling is celebrated around the world for his large-scale abstract “calligraphic paintings.” Wang experiments with ways in which the calligraphic stroke might be liberated from the conveyance of meaning, using the line as a form of expression. The act of his painting became a physical performance in which Wang translates the text of ancient Chinese poems with gestural interpretations of traditional characters.
Wang Tiande is an innovative avant-garde ink artist known for his creative use of incense sticks as a form of brush. Well versed in traditional Chinese art and culture, Wang searches for further possibilities in the realm of ink art, transforming paintings of traditional landscapes and calligraphy while conveying the ephemeral quality of painting. Originally trained in mathematics and Chinese calligraphy, Wei Ligang takes an analytical approach to revolutionize traditional calligraphy. Initially playing within traditional rules and structures of classic calligraphy, Wei has since pushed past textual playfulness into a purely abstract form. He aims to develop “writing” (shuxie) into an art form capable of embodying all phenomena and things in the universe and a way to construct “pure structure itself.”
Please join us for the opening reception on Saturday, November 23 from 2-4pm!
To learn more, click here.
CURRENT EXHIBITION
Hidden Stories
October 30 – December 21, 2024
Opening Reception: Wednesday, October 30 from 6-8pm
We are pleased to present Hidden Stories, featuring six contemporary artists who work with photography as their primary medium. The artists in the exhibition are all storytellers; Rene Balcer, Stephen King and Myeong Soo Kim form narratives through their depictions of natural landscape, while South Ho, Ho Tam and Pixy Liao’s imagery is more personal, showing glimpses of everyday life, cityscapes and moments that enter the surreal.
Born in Montreal, René Balcer searches for natural compositions that suggest a sense of disquietude coupled with an implied or hidden narrative. Although several of his works in this exhibition offer sweeping imagery of natural landscapes, the subject of these pieces, and of his work in general, often deals with histories of social injustice around the globe. Specific to the group of works here is a little known history of displaced Inuit communities in northern Canada: in 1953 and 1955, the Canadian government had the RCMP move 92 Inuit people coming from several family groups. Forcefully migrating from Inukjuak in Northern Quebec 2000 km north to Resolute Bay on Cornwallis Island, and to Grise Fiord on Ellesmere Island, they were left with no knowledge of the seasons, local weather, or animal migration patterns. It is a testament to the resilience of this community that they were able to survive. Far Away shows two Inuit Mothers with their kids, taken on Canada Day at Resolute, while Saw, a particularly striking image, presents a rusty saw as the sole evidence of human presence in the otherwise pristine wilderness. Balcer’s triptych Arctic Ice presents a different type of evidence – that of the melting glacial ice, a striking witness to global warming in a location that few of us ever see.
Based in Hong Kong and New York, Stephen King is an award-winning landscape photographer whose work also deals with the environment; he approaches it by capturing fleeting natural phenomena on film. Fascinated by patterns formed by nature, King travels the world in search of images that explore the landscape’s capacity for both drama and serenity. King’s work has been described as painterly, a style he cultivates through his use of light, color and composition. This exhibition features 3 photographs taken during his travels: Morning Meander, taken in China, is as mysterious as it is serene, opening up a host of questions about the subject of the photograph. Where are they headed? What is their life like, and what hidden stories does it contain? Reynisfjara Beach and River Delta 28, taken in Iceland, hover on the edge of abstraction. Nature’s varied patterns are captured through King’s lens and exude a sense of movement, evolution, and inevitable change.
Myeong Soo Kim is a Korean American artist who creates process-based works which explore the ineffable, expressive, and material limits of images. The works on display focus on the artist’s longstanding engagement with natural landscapes — a recurring motif throughout Kim’s practice. Often informed by his personal travels through various geographies, from Utah’s desert to the Bolivian Andes, the artist’s practice visually reconciles actual places with expressions of metaphysical encounters, revealing a profound sensitivity to deep psychological states like dreaming, distance, and loss.
A large part of Kim’s oeuvre has been collage, and here he combines this practice with his photography to produce layered images. The constructed landscapes in his photographic works almost read as natural from far away, but upon closer inspection are distorted and artificially constructed. Untitled green landscape and Collapsed landscape 004 are, in effect, two versions or ‘ways of seeing’ the same scene, according to the artist. The way we perceive our surroundings differ from individual to individual, and the internal narratives that we create differ as well. In his work, Kim creates space to question our relationship to place, time, illusion, and the emotions that this discovery evokes.
Based in Hong Kong, South Ho Siu Nam works across various mediums including photography, performance, drawing, and mixed media installations. His works address the wonders and helplessness of living, the spirituality of existence, as well as the socio-political awareness of Hong Kong.
For Hidden Stories, we present After EveryDaily VI, part of a new series that reflects upon the artist’s experiences with the Hong Kong democratic social movement. In a recent related series called Work naming has not yet succeeded, Ho revisited the sites of the ‘anti-extradition law movement’ protests from 2019, documenting the (sometimes barely) whitewashed walls that were covered with graffiti and slogans during those turbulent years. Returning to a form of expression first used in 2013 including colorful blocks painted directly onto his photographs, this new body of work employs many of the same photographs; the photos are printed in black and white, being more subtle in self-expression compared to the original series. Called Every Daily, the 2013 series was a way to process the vast changes that his Tin Shui Wai neighborhood had undergone, as well as of his father’s recent passing at the time. With After EveryDaily, Ho returns to the original intent of Every Daily, repurposing in conversation with the continued changes taking place in Hong Kong. According to the artist, this new body of work allows him to focus on his “personal use of this painting/drawing style as a practice or form of spiritual healing”.
Ho Tam was born in Hong Kong and has been based in Toronto, Canada for many years. He works across different disciplines including video, photography and printmaking, often dealing with themes of social visibility and representation. Acting as an acute observer and active participant, Tam tirelessly documented the surroundings with photography and video during his stay in New York from 1996 to 2003—both an insider and outsider. Hair culture in Manhattan’s Chinatown became one of the main focal points of his time in the city; highlighting the working class within a marginalized community, his photographs explore how everyday individuals negotiate their identity in the larger social context. At one level, the barbershops function as a refuge of self care and comfort. On another, they evoke questions on the conformity under homogenized standard of beauty and societal expectation. In this respect, A Manifesto of Hair explores the relationships among race, class and commerce through looking at the care of hair.
Pixy Liao uses her work as a vehicle with which to explore and question existing gender roles, relationship dynamics, cultural traditions and expectations. In everything she makes, she exerts her gaze; however subtle the portrayal, she is always the one in control. Many of her photographs pull inspiration from art history and the media; but just as often are produced from her imagination. Storytelling is inherent in the works, though she takes care to leave the narrative open-ended, allowing the audience to fill in the blanks.
The images in this exhibition create an introductory feeling to hypothetical stories, and could easily be interpreted as the opening scene of very different films: the sci-fi saga Space Girl met Earth Boy; or the surreal Alice in Wonderland-esque Day Dream. Time to Wake up, inspired by Balthus’ The Room and Shadows on the wardrobe are both bathed in mysterious yellowish tones, provoking the viewer to imagine the imminence of the day (or night).
To learn more, click here.
PAST RELATED EVENT
Artist Talk
Hidden Stories: The Arctic
Saturday, November 2, 2024 at 2pm
Join us for a special conversation between our upcoming exhibition artist, René Balcer and Patricia Marroquin Norby, Associate Curator of Native American Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Come to the gallery to hear René discuss his photographs of Inuit communities in the Canadian Arctic, and gain insights from Patricia’s perspective!
René Balcer began his photography career in 1968. Eschewing studio work and staged images, Balcer seeks natural compositions that convey a sense of disquietude and an implied or hidden narrative, as well as images that engage his interest in social justice.
Ms. Norby made history in 2020 as the Met’s first full-time curator of Native American art. She has since curated a number of groundbreaking exhibitions during her tenure at the museum.
RECENTLY CLOSED ASIA WEEK NEW YORK AUTUMN 2024 EXHIBITION
Chinyee: Enraptured By Color
September 5 – October 26, 2024
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 5, 2024, 6-8pm
Curator Conversation: Saturday, September 7, 2024, 2-4pm (kindly RSVP to [email protected])
“Painting to me is a process of discovering, shaping and reshaping my inner being. I work spontaneously – starting with a line or a dot, similar to Chinese calligraphy… then I let the drama begin to develop among the colours and lines under my subconscious control. I seek in my work rhythm, harmony among conflicts, lines with energy, and even surprise. I chose to do abstract painting… the language utters energetic rhythm, subconscious cries, and subtle poems.” ~ Chinyee, 2018
We are proud to present our fifth solo exhibition by the late Chinese American artist Chinyee (b. 1929 Nanjing, China). This will be the first solo exhibition of her work since she passed away last June. Chinyee’s work, often been described as “Lyrical Abstraction,” is permeated with influences from both East and West. Her loose, unformulated brushstrokes reflect both Asian brush techniques and years of careful study of modern abstraction. The symphonic, colorful, and optimistic aura of her works is edged with dynamism.
Anchoring the exhibition will be a selection of works from the 1960s, two of which were recently part of the critically acclaimed exhibition Action / Gesture / Paint: a global story of women and abstraction 1940-70, exhibited at Whitechapel Gallery in the UK, Fondation Vincent Van Gogh in Arles, France, and Kunsthalle Bielefeld in Germany. Showing alongside paintings by Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler and Elaine deKooning, Chinyee’s A Touch of Red and Solitude No.2 were part of a long overdue survey of female abstract painters, most of whom were overlooked in the decades that were dominated by the New York school artists. Our exhibition also includes a selection of Chinyee’s works from the 1980s through 2018, both on canvas and on paper, many of them being exhibited for the first time.
Enraptured By Color coincides with the exhibition Asian American Abstraction: Historic to Contemporary at Hollis Taggart, which includes 3 paintings by Chinyee and is curated by Jeffery Wechsler, previously the Senior Curator of the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum.
Please join us for the opening reception on Thursday September 5th, 2024. We will also be hosting an event with Jeffrey Weshler and Chinyee’s son, Andy Sung, who will be in conversation at the gallery on Saturday, September 7th to discuss the artist’s life and career. RSVP is required through [email protected]
To learn more, 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.