Ching Ho Cheng was a New York-based artist recognised for his psychedelic paintings, torn works, and oxidised sculptures that investigate light, texture, and processes of transformation.
Read MoreChing Ho Cheng was born in 1946 in Cuba to a Chinese diplomat, and moved with his family to New York in 1951. He studied at The Cooper Union School of Art between 1964 and 1968.
In the 1960s and 70s, Ching Ho Cheng was often a resident at the famous Chelsea Hotel, and befriended established and emerging creative minds including artist Andy Warhol, singer Bette Milder, and poet David Rattray. The artist even makes an appearance in Tally Brown, New York (1979), the award-winning documentary by German filmmaker, artist, and gay rights activist Rosa von Praunheim about the career of actress and singer Tally Brown.
During this period, Cheng created psychedelic paintings that included recurring motifs of smiling and grimacing lips, seas of minute tentacles that resemble villi or spermatozoa, and patterns. Angelhead (1968), one early work, was later featured in the 2012 group exhibition Sinister Pop at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and is now in the museum's collection.
The mundane began to enter Ching Ho Cheng's works in the late 1970s, when his interest in ancient cultures and symbols led him to explore the ephemeral beauty of ordinary objects. Luminosity is often central to his gouache paintings of windows, which depict rectangles of soft light projected from windows.
Cheng also meticulously depicted such subjects as the halo of light enveloping an electric bulb in Untitled (1978) and an iron topped on an ironing board in Untitled (1980), which reflect his concern with shape, colour, and light.
Ching Ho Cheng's torn paper works, begun in the early 1980s, were borne by accident: the artist tore up an unsatisfactory drawing, and discovered that the very act of destroying an artwork was also constructive. In his torn works, Cheng typically creates frottage using graphite in the shape of an egg, ellipse, or a rectangle, with a black backdrop, and tears it into large pieces. The fragments are at times accompanied with torn pieces of bright colours, such as the shock of blue or neon green in two untitled works from 1985.
Returning from his travels in Turkey in 1981, where he became enamored with caves, grottoes, and architectural ruins, Ching Ho Cheng started to experiment with processes of oxidation. The resulting 'Alchemical' works, made by submerging powdered iron- or copper-covered paper in water, display an array of textures and colours that the artist pursued throughout his career. Cheng's oxidised works culminated in The Grotto, a window installation displayed at Grey Art Gallery, New York University in 1987.
Since his death in 1989 from chronic lung disease, Ching Ho Cheng has been recognised for his tenacious exploration of colour, texture, and symbols, as well as for his work at a time when Asian-American artists were underrepresented in New York.
In September 2021, David Zwirner will present a solo exhibition of Cheng's works as part of 'More Life', a series of solo shows commemorating artists whose lives were affected by the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s.
Following his first solo show at Kunsthandel K276, Amsterdam in 1976, Ching Ho Cheng exhibited in New York and elsewhere. Posthumous solo and group exhibitions featuring his works include Constructing Identity in America, 1766–2017, Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey (2019); Edition, BCB Art Gallery, New York (2018); The Five Elements, Shepherd W&K Galleries, New York (2015); Sinister Pop, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2012); Ching Ho Cheng: A Retrospective, Shepherd & Derom Galleries, New York (2008).
Ching Ho Cheng's website can be found here.
Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2021
