Chinese ink art on show in US

SAN FRANCISCO — Ink arts, which have flourished in China for more than 2,000 years, are now speaking to Western audience through contemporary forms.

An exhibition, titled Ink Worlds, presents the work of two dozen contemporary artists from China and the United States, ranging from the pioneering abstract work from the late 1960s to 21st-century technological innovations.

The ongoing exhibition, organized by the Cantor Arts Center of Stanford University, is free to the public and runs till Sept. 3 at the center in Palo Alto, California, on the US west coast.

The artworks on display explore visual features and international connections as well as the ongoing impact of techniques, materials and themes.

And the exhibition is designed to examine the evolution of this art form -from scrolls and panel paintings to photographic and video forms.

One of the primary differences between the contemporary ink paintings and traditional Chinese paintings is the artists’ interest in abstraction and processes and formats such as installation, for displaying ink paintings, says Richard Vinograd, the Christensen Fund Professor in Asian Art at Stanford University.

The distinction is especially represented by the determined pursuit of abstraction ever since the 1960s by Liu Guosong and other artists, said Vinograd.

“I think it was one of the major turning points. And it has also been carried through more recent periods,” he says.

The works at the exhibition come from the collection of Chinese American entrepreneur Jerry Yang, former CEO of Yahoo, and his wife Akiko Yamazaki. And their collection is widely recognized as one of the most important private collections of contemporary Chinese ink art.

This exhibition is the first show of Yang and Yamazaki’s ink art collection. And accompanying the exhibition is the release of a book of the same title Ink Worlds, authored by Vinograd and Ellen Huang. It is the first book to represent the collection from the perspective of contemporary art history.