RECENTLY CLOSED EXHIBIT
Iconology of Life
September 20 – December 1, 2024
We are proud to present Iconology of Life, the first solo exhibition for the Guangdong-born visual artist Lao Tongli (b. 1982). Lao Tongli is a contemporary artist working in the early gongbi or “meticulous brush” mode of painting—a tradition which can trace its roots to Imperial painting of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) and religious mural painting dating as far back as the the Six Dynasties period (220-589). Unlike China’s literati painting tradition which emphasized landscape painting in ink monochrome, gongbi painting often depicted moral, spiritual and religious narratives using vibrant mineral pigments such as azurite, malachite, lapis lazuli, lead, cobalt and cinnabar. Having entered China as early as the 3rd century along the Silk Road from Central Asia, gongbi painting facilitated cross-cultural artistic exchange between China, Central Asia, the Middle East, East Asia and Europe over the ensuing millenia. As a result, gongbi painting shares many of the same materials and techniques found in European fresco painting, Persian or South Asian miniature painting, Tibetan thanka painting, and Japanese Nihonga painting.
Having mastered gongbi painting materials and methods at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Lao Tongli spent two years, following his graduation in 2006, working in France and Germany for international contemporary artist Yang Jiechang, himself a master of gongbi painting technique. There he developed a novel approach to gongbi painting that reformulates both the technique and the visual semiotics of this early transnational art form for use in our international, contemporary art discourse today.
In expanding the visual semiotics of gongbi painting, Lao starts with a simple philosophical premise that universal or trans-cultural human meaning emerges first as personal, subjective experience. Using this mode of thinking, he has over the past decade been systematically building a lexicon of images or xiang to resurrect the natural and organic world view of living systems that connects the early Taoists and Song Neo-Confucians with modern, international thinkers. This exhibition features three series—The Desire of Libido (2013–2018), Above the Horizon · Sky (2018–present), and Self and the Others (2021–present)—in which Lao develops the yixiang or ‘idea-images’ of Heart, Forest, Sky, and Self-Others, exploring their interconnected relationships.
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About the Gallery
INKstudio is an art gallery based in Beijing and New York. Its mission is 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 including Bingyi, Chang Yahon, Chen Haiyan, Cheng Yen-ping, Dai Guangyu, He Yunchang, Hung Fai, Huang Zhiyang, Inoue Yuichi, Jennifer Wen Ma, Jeong Gwang Hee, Kang Chunhui, Kim Jong-ku, Lee In, Lao Tongli, Li Jin, Li Huasheng, Lim Hyun-lak, Lim Ok-sang, Liu Dan, Peng Kanglong, Ethan Su Huang-sheng, Tao Aimin, Tseng Chien-ying, Wai Pong-yu, Wang Dongling, Wang Tiande, Wei Ligang, Xu Bing, Yang Jiechang and Zheng Chongbin and exhibits works of diverse media, including painting, calligraphy, sculpture, installation, performance, photography, and video. Since its inception in 2012, INKstudio has regularly appeared at art fairs such as the Armory Show (New York), Art Basel Hong Kong, and West Bund Art & Design (Shanghai) and placed works into major public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Freer-Sackler Galleries, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Brooklyn Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and M+ Museum, Hong Kong.
Dr. Britta Erickson, INKstudio’s Artistic Director, drives all aspects of its programming and scholarly activities. An independent scholar and curator living in Palo Alto, California, she has curated major exhibitions at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C. (Word Play: Contemporary Art by Xu Bing) and the Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford (On the Edge: Contemporary Chinese Artists Encounter the West). In 2007 she co-curated the Chengdu Biennial, which focused on ink art, and in 2010 she was a contributing curator for Shanghai: Art of the City (Asian Art Museum, San Francisco). Dr. Erickson has written numerous books, articles, and essays on contemporary Chinese art. She has produced a series of short films about ink painting entitled The Enduring Passion for Ink. Ms. Erickson is on the advisory boards of The Ink Society (Hong Kong) and Three Shadows Photography Art Centre (Beijing), as well as the editorial boards of Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art and ART Asia Pacific. In 2006 she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research in Beijing on the Chinese contemporary art market. Dr. Erickson received her Ph. D. in Chinese Art History from Stanford University.
