Hengshan Calligraphy Biennial Extols Ink’s Past and Present

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The inaugural Hengshan Calligraphy Biennial launched on 20 January at the Hengshan Calligraphy Art Center (HCAC), part of the Taoyuan Museum of Fine Arts (TMoFA), near Taipei.

Subtitled Era of Principle and No Principle Interwoven—Calligraphy as a Visual Form, the Biennial explores the intersection of calligraphy and contemporary art.

The event presents works by 42 contemporary calligraphers and artists, including the splashy, supersized strokes of Japanese artist Kawao Tomoko, pictured top.

Tomoko performed her work Change/No Change at the Biennial’s opening in response to the theme of Principle and No Principle, which captures the tension between tradition and innovation in contemporary ink art.

Highlights of the exhibition include Taiwanese artist Lee Chun-yi‘s Mountain Never Too High (2021), in which the artist set aside the brush to apply ink using stamps made of cork, and Korean artist Park Jinwoo‘s Ink Stick Pagoda (2022), which he created by rubbing the paper over patterned ink sticks, the blocks of solid ink calligraphers grind down and mix with water to create liquid ink.

Fung Ming Chip, who was born in Guangdong and raised in Hong Kong, presents the work Light Script, Heart Sutra (2011), in which almost the entire sheet of paper is blacked out, leaving only triangles of white, like flames in the dark.

The Biennial also introduces a dialogue between artists from Asia and Europe.

Xu Jing’s Speculations in [the] Night at a Tiny Window (2019) feature a delicate script written on vintage prints he purchased in France, while French artist André Kneib contributes calligraphy rendered in paint instead of ink.

Other artists featured in the Biennial include China’s Liu Yi, Wang Gongyi, Chen Danqing, and Liu Kuo-sung, Taiwan’s Pan Hsin-hua, Wu Chi-tsung, Lee Chun-yi, and Yang Shih-chih, Japan’s Yamamoto Hisashi, Hong Kong’s Wesley Tongson, and French-German artist Hans Hartung.

The Hengshan Calligraphy Biennial is jointly curated by Wu Chao-Jen, Assistant Professor of the Department of Fine Arts at Tunghai University, and HCAC’s Chen I-Tso.

‘To inspire people to think about calligraphy and pay attention to its future, this exhibition not only answers questions but also poses them,’ they said. —[O]

Main image: Kawao Tomoko, Correlation 2022 -cross- (2022). Ink on paper. Courtesy Taoyuan Museum of Fine Arts. Photo: Anpis Wang.