Lo Ch'ing

NEW YORK - Goedhuis Contemporary will host a special show of Modernist Ink Paintings by the Chinese artist, poet, art historian and collector, Lo Ch'ing (b. Ching-tao City, 1948) from October 22 – November 17 at its New York gallery, and at art fairs in New York, Hong Kong and Miami. It is the second in a series of 15 shows on the New Ink Painting Goedhuis Contemporary will stage in the next two years.

Lo Ch'ing has been instrumental in expanding the parameters of the increasingly heated discussion within China and in the West as to how the New Ink Painting can be made relevant and meaningful to today's world. As a respected professor in the field, as well as an acclaimed and widely collected artist, he has consistently explored ways in which to subvert expectations of what "Chinese ink painting" should look like. In his paintings he does this by combining new and ancient form and subject matter and boldly inserting contemporary themes such as high rises and highways as well as materials like asphalt. He likes to think of his work as a conversation between past and present.

Lo Ch'ing received a traditional painting education from one of the dispossessed scions of the last imperial ruling house, and graduated both from Fu Jen University in China and the University of Washington in the United States, where he also served as Visiting Professor. He has been editor in chief of the Tsang Hai Art and Aesthetic Series Tung Ta and San Ming Book Store in Taipei, Taiwan, since 1991.

A recent article in Asian Art News refers to the artist's 'witty spirit' and "homage he pays to the legacy of traditional Chinese art while spinning it into a postmodern conceptual context." Lo Ch'ing uses both Chinese ink-color painting and calligraphy techniques, redefining and reinterpreting Chinese painting and, as a poet, has created a new graphic language of his own that is deeply rooted in a surrealistic symbolism with a postmodern touch.

Lo Ch'ing enjoys wide international acclaim. He has had numerous solo exhibitions over the past 35 years in galleries in the United Kingdom, Shanghai, Los Angeles, Milan, Paris, Heidelberg, Lausanne, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Seoul, and in a number of US cities. He is represented in the collections of the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art in London; the British Museum; the Royal Ontario Museum; the Saint Louis Art Museum; Museum fur Ostasiatische Kunst in Berlin; the Taipei Fine Art Museum; the Ashmolean in Oxford; the Hong Kong Min Chio Group; Asia Society in New York; and both the Kaohsiung and National Taiwan museums in Taiwan.

Among works to be featured at Goedhuis Contemporary is a 2001 ink on paper from Lo Ch'ing's Postmodern Conversation with Past Painters series, "Calling for Tung Chi-chang: Move the Mountains with Brushstrokes"; another ink on paper titled "Dancing in the Wild Wind with a Red Sail," also from 2001; and a third 2001 ink on paper, "Dancing in the Wild Wind with a Red Sail," from the Song of the Trees series.

Michael Goedhuis opened Goedhuis Contemporary in London in 1995 and inaugurated the New York space in January, 2002, after spending two decades specializing in early Asian art. He was already well known to prominent museum officials and collectors from his appearances at the most important art fairs here and abroad.

He identified New York's pre-eminence as a focal point for contemporary Chinese art in 2001, when he became the first dealer in the United States to stage a major selling show of 30 leading Chinese artists and designers, "China without Borders," at Sotheby's. In announcing the two year series of 15 shows on Modernist Ink Painters, Goedhuis believes that Chinese Ink Painting is the most fundamentally important artistic expression of Chinese thought today, and that the works exhibited will represent the best collecting opportunity and value for those interested in assembling a collection in the context of Chinese contemporary culture.

Ground-breaking Chinese Ink Painting is still at an early point of recognition by informed opinion both in Asia and in the West as its best artists are now less interested in emulating Western styles than in creating a new language that expresses their experience of the world and the galvanizing changes in Chinese society.

A selection of Lo Ch'ing's works will also be featured at Goedhuis Contemporary exhibitions in October at the Hong Kong International Arts & Antiques Fair, the International Art + Design Fair, and International Fine Art & Antique Dealers Shows in New York, and at two Miami shows in December, Art Miami and artAsia.