Lan zhenghui | de-ink

September 29th, 2022 - November 2nd, 2022

Crossing Art is pleased to present De-Ink, a solo exhibition featuring contemporary ink artist from China, Lan Zhenghui. The exhibition will showcase Lan’s latest series of works produced during the past three years. Serving as Lan’s response to the sudden onset of the huge change of the world, the series will explore his thoughts and reflections on the society as he observed its unprecedented change. The exhibition will be on display at Crossing Art gallery in Chelsea, New York from September 29th, 2022 - November 2nd, 2022, and will open with an opening reception on Thursday, September 29th, from 7-9 p.m.

Now based in New York City, Lan Zhenghui has become a household name in the contemporary art sphere. Known for his impressively dynamic monochrome abstract works, Lan has developed an inking style unique to him, dubbed  “heavy ink” by art critic Liu Xiaochun; a term coined in reference to the physical and the emotional weight of Lan’s work. This “weight” derives from Lan’s transformation of traditional Chinese calligraphy techniques, which he adapts for himself by coating his brushes with unusually weighty quantities of ink, thus turning what is traditionally a fine-line practice into one of heavy, bold strokes. As a result, his oeuvres are shockingly energetic and dynamic, imbued with a great deal of emotional weight that contrast with the slender tranquility of traditional Chinese ink calligraphy. 

In De-Ink, Lan uses this heavy ink style to explore a subject matter that has been, until recently, foreign to him. Whereas Lan’s custom has been to use abstract linework as a means to transform and portray the material world, the works showcased in De-Inkare instead visual representations of the immaterial feelings, emotions, and sensations felt by Lan as he grappled with the new world brought on by the onset of pandemic. Lan combines his trademark bold strokes with a monochrome grayscale palette to create a sense of contrast and division on each canvas - a disparity that brings audiences closer to understanding the clashing emotions of disorientation and want for safety that were universally experienced throughout the pandemic. It is perhaps because of this new subject matter that this series feels as intimate and familiar as anything Lan has yet to create. Though acting as a reflection of Lan’s own emotions, the feelings of confusion, isolation, and grief that are imbued into the works have become a shared experience; foreign to none and recognized by all. The sense of familiarity found in each of the works results in a powerful feeling of mutual recognition and understanding between the viewer and the art, as if Lan himself were stepping out of his work and extending a compassionate hand to his audience.

About Artist

Lan Zhenghui (b.1959) graduated from Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 1987, and currently lives and works in Beijing and New York. Occupying the esthetic confluence between traditional Chinese ink painting and Western abstraction, Lan Zhenghui’s work serves to reposition both. Zhenghui lets the ink flow and discover its own momentum in bold, kinetic, strokes as it determines his forms.

Working on both a monumental and intimate scale, his powerful brush paintings carve a landscape in time where the spirits of Chinese landscape linger like ghosts, haunting both the process – the brushstrokes, the vectoring – and the resulting shapes.

Zhenghui’s work has been shown in the National Art Museum of ChinaFlemish Art Museum in Brussels, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Venice Biennale, the Singapore Third Biennial and Art International in Istanbul, International Art Fair in Taipei, Doron Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai, Art Dubai, SDMOMA in Shanghai, Art Baden in Germany, Art Silicon Valley, Art Miami and Art Central Hong Kong

His work has been collected by Rubell Family, National Art Museum of China, Songzhuang Ink Painting League, Florida Gulf Coast University, Chinese Cultural Center Of Greater Toronto and is part of numerous private collections.