THE ARMORY SHOW

Lui Shou-Kwan was one of the first ink painters to encounter modern abstraction coming out of Europe and the US in the 1950s, incorporating it into his work and influencing subsequent generations of Hong Kong artists who followed him. Decades later, Wang Dongling began to incorporate abstraction as well, though he did so through his calligraphic practice, a natural progression as his calligraphy style was already moving toward abstract forms.

Wesley Tongson is currently the subject of a retrospective at Asia Society in Hong Kong, and was also featured in a solo exhibition at BAMPFA in 2021. He famously eschewed his brush, instead painting with his fingers using ink, in order to attain a more direct connection to his painting surfaces, creating expressive, imagined landscapes. In contrast, Cherie Cheuk adheres to the traditional gongbi tradition of highly detailed brush painting. Her subject matter and colors are markedly non-traditional, however, as she uses pop culture references and a contemporary color palette in her recent work.

Alongside the ink artists, we will also present a selection of diaspora artists working in other media, including Walasse Ting, who was known for his colorful watercolor works on paper, Li Hongwei, who works with steel and ceramics, Fong Chung Ray, employing a method of acrylic ‘transfers’ on canvas, Yang Yongliang, who will debut a new series of photo collages inspired by New York City, and Mimi Chen Ting, whose retrospective is currently on view at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art. All of these artists were or are currently based in the US, and represent the diversity of Asian American art reaching back to the 1950s, when Ting emigrated to New York.