Hybrid Nature
January 9 – March 1, 2025
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 9 from 6-8pm
Live Calligraphy Performance: Saturday, January 11 at 2pm
Artist Led Walkthrough: Saturday, January 18 at 2pm
We are pleased to present Hybrid Nature, an exhibition featuring artists Bouie Choi, Chu Chu, and Jia Sung. Although the three artists’ artworks and processes differ, they all explore forms of hybridity, both in the themes at play within them and the mediums they use. Hong Kong-based Bouie Choi is known for her use of reclaimed wood as a material, manipulating and then painting on the surface to create object-like works. Chu Chu takes the natural world as her subject in her photography-calligraphy works, increasingly blending the two practices in her various bodies of work. Jia Sung frequently incorporates embroidered elements into her paintings; interestingly, hybrid figures, part-human and part-animal, often populate her works as she delves into folkloric traditions and tropes.
In her new series of work for this exhibition, Bouie Choi decided to take a more intuitive, expansive approach to her artwork process. Rather than relying on pre-determined subject matter (often plucked from daily news and personal experiences in Hong Kong), she instead focused on trees – in particular palm trees – portraying them as ‘witnesses and the ‘threads’ that connect us all under global challenges’. In contrast to the widely planted hybrid palms used in plantations, the starting point for this series was an article that described how the seeds of the extinct Judean Palm tree—2,000-year-old date palm seeds—were uncovered and revived. The ‘new’ tree was named Methuselah by Dr. Elaine Solowey, after the biblical character known for his longevity, and the idea of this history-defying living being appealed to Choi as a natural, hidden observer.
The artist states: “I see wood as an organism, not merely a plane carrying the energy flow and visualization of artistic intuition. It is more than a material; it is intimately connected to mankind. Wood carries the weight of mythical moments, intertwining with our lives in ways that are sentimental, political, climatic, and spiritual. It is also my witness of how I synchronized into the flow of collective consciousness locally and globally in recent years.” As a result, Choi’s imagery in this new body of work includes imagery from both local and global sources. The Heavy Lightness depicts a vast underwater scene with a diver descending toward a whale; a shoreline with trees appears behind floating bubbles, as if submerged at the bottom of the ocean. Intimate and at times disorienting, her work draws the viewer into a world in flux, where the ever-present trees stand as silent witnesses.
Trees and other natural flora are also common themes in the work of Chu Chu. Inspired by Chinese philosophy, classical literature and Chinese solar terms, her works combine photography, calligraphy and painting. This exhibition includes works that span Chu’s career to date, from her earliest series of tree branches with subtle calligraphy in the shadows, to her latest photography works laden with colored script. Also included are several diptychs from her ongoing series 72 Climates, which represents the subtle change of weather according to the movements of the solar system. The paired photographs and paintings highlight the dialogue between the artist’s two creative practices.
City-Twelve Months Ritual Letter is a work from Chu Chu’s Invisible cities series, where she takes text from both Chinese and Western literature and writes them in her flowing calligraphic script. The text used for this piece, called ‘Calligraphy of Month Ritual Letter’, is a work by the calligrapher Suo Jing of the Western Jin Dynasty, from one of the most famous running script model books; it describes changing sentiments during various months of the year. In this piece Chu adds island-like forms that float above the surface of her calligraphy; through this addition of poetic interpretation, she creates a space where the real and virtual simultaneously alternate and converge.
In contrast, Jia Sung’s works are figurative, and draw from the Chinese zhiguai (‘strange tales’) tradition. Drawing on motifs from Chinese mythology and Buddhist iconography, she uses the familiar visual language of folklore to examine and subvert conventional archetypes of femininity, queerness, and otherness. According to the artist,
“The genre of ‘strange tales’ cannot be translated directly through the lens of horror — the supernatural, the monstrous, the spiritual, seep into the tidy confines of ordinary existence, often humorous, arbitrary, smearing at the boundaries of our reality and then slinking away just as rapidly… Hybrid figures, part-human, part-animal, playact domestic and social roles with each other, make halfhearted attempts at assimilation, reverse roles and swap parts (both anatomy and persona-wise.) They go to school, pose together, fight, court, pray, eat at table and each other.”
The animal/human hybrids in Jia Sung’s work speak to the performative nature of selfhood, and often in her case, of femininity. Tiger Rider depicts two human/tiger hybrids set against embroidered clouds; the scene looks as if it were plucked from an ancient folk tale. Underlying the playfulness of the work is the notion of control and power that humans exert over animalia and nature. In this series of works, “our imagined dynamic of subjugation with nature and nonhuman is reflected, dissolved, mis/redirected.”
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UPCOMING 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 4-8pm
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.
We look forward to welcoming you soon!
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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.