Born in Taipei, Yu Peng (1955-2014) is a renowned self-taught artist and a prominent figure in contemporary ink painting in Taiwan. He became active during the resurgence of new literati ink art in the mid-1980s, which inspired him to travel extensively in Europe and America, prompting a re-evaluation of his cultural roots. In 1986, a fortuitous trip to China opened a new chapter in his artistic journey, blending traditional influences with contemporary expressions.

Yu Peng is celebrated for his mastery of baimiao (fine line) technique to create ink art that embody a classical elegance infused with a modern sense of freedom. Pond Bliss exudes a grand and atmospheric quality, showcasing delicate brushwork and layered ink washes that beautifully capture the essence of impressionistic lotus. Early in his career, he developed a strong ability for figurative drawing, which later transformed into stunning compositions in his middle and late periods. His works have been collected by major institutions such as the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, solidifying Yu Peng's legacy as a significant figure in the evolution of modern ink painting.

Yang Renkai (1915 - 2008) was a renowned Chinese connoisseur and art historian, and he was the director of Liaoning Provincial Museum, the first public museum founded in the People’s Republic of China. In 1975, Yang Renkai visited the U.S. to study Chinese paintings and calligraphy in American museums, and he wrote widely about his findings. He also viewed private collections in the U.S., gaining a deep appreciation for how these works were treasured abroad. In 2006, at the age of 91, Yang Renkai created the current work, demonstrating his lifelong dedication to brush and ink.

As a renowned artist and educator in 20th-century Chinese art, Huang Junbi (1898-1991) was celebrated for his mastery of traditional landscape painting and his dedication to advancing modern art education. After relocating to Taiwan in 1948, he led the Fine Arts Department at National Taiwan Normal University for 22 years, championing the modernization of traditional art education and leaving a profound impact on art creation and education in Taiwan. Alongside Zhang Daqian and Pu Ru, he became known as one of the “Three Masters Across the Sea,” developing a distinctive style characterized by solid, harmonious brushstrokes that conveyed elegance and simplicity.

By the early 1970s, as his style reached full maturity, Huang’s work took on an increasingly grand and powerful tone. Approaching his seventies, he drew inspiration from nature, blending vast landscapes with his own emotions to produce compositions that fused traditional serenity with modern aesthetics. Known for his depictions of towering mountains and cascading waterfalls, his works from this period reveal an impressive momentum and sophisticated structure. His steady, delicate brushwork and varied ink layers—especially in his rendering of waterfalls—achieve both weight and elegance, showing a balance of expressive freedom and traditional form. This piece, distinct from his typical late-period works, exemplifies his more liberated freehand style, built upon his traditional mountain and waterfall scenes. It is through this balance of mastery and expressive freedom that Huang’s work speaks to the enduring vitality and innovation of brush and ink.

Since the Song Dynasty, Chinese artists have been inspired to use pingtiao (set of scrolls) to display their works. These scrolls can be used separately to showcase different calligraphy works or paintings, or they can collectively display one single work (with multiple scrolls combining to create a unified piece). This form of display is sometimes referred to as haiman, the "sea curtain" mounting. Shadow Curtains is a photographic series that follows this form of aesthetic tradition. In the Shadow Curtains series, several excerpts drawn from a single 35mm frame of film is selected and then distributed across several scrolls. In this specific piece, the imagery captured is a section of a ginkgo tree which has a long history of 1400 years, located in the Guanyin Chan Temple in Shaanxi Province in China.

Wang Tiande (b.1960 in Shanghai) is a leading contemporary Chinese artist widely celebrated for his revolutionary practices of ink painting and unconventional takes on traditional Chinese art. A multitude of powerful and gestural brushstrokes of painted calligraphic characters compose a piece of Hanfu (the traditional clothing of the Han Chinese people) which symbolizes a shared Chinese history. On the left side of the composition, more Chinese characters are revealed in the forms of marks burned by cigarettes. It is the artist’s signature technique to use cigarettes or incense sticks to make burn marks on the outer surface of the layered rice paper and further create painted underlayer. Through this seemingly destructive art-making process, Wang Tiande deconstructs and recreates the practice of Chinese ink painting, questioning the relationship between the past and the present.

Hu Yefo (1908-1980) was a celebrated 20th-century Chinese painter known for his meticulous gongbi style, particularly in portraits of elegant women and figures, which helped establish his place in the Shanghai School. Influenced by Ming dynasty painter Qiu Ying, Hu perfected the use of fine, iron-wire-like lines to create precise, lively forms. His paintings combine traditional gongbi techniques with his own innovations, achieving both technical skill and a distinct artistic flair. In his later years at Duoyunxuan, he studied many authentic ancient paintings, which brought greater depth and stability to his work, showcasing his mastery of brush and ink.

Hu Yefo’s linework is remarkably layered, conveying subtle emotion beyond mere form. In Oxherding, for example, he uses gentle, flowing lines to capture the form of an ox and a cow, depicting a quiet intimacy between them. His brushstrokes, soft and smoke-like, precisely define their figures, while the fluid lines hint at a delicate connection, revealing Hu’s skill in expressing mood through form. Through this deep exploration of brush and ink, Hu achieved a unified balance of structure and atmosphere, setting a high standard for gongbi painting in the 20th century.

Arnold Chang and Michael Cherney’s collaborative series debuted in 2009. Their works blur the distinction between photography and Chinese painting by harnessing similarities between film grains and ink dots.

“Ink Bamboo #1” is the only work depicting bamboo aside from classical landscapes in the collaboration series. It has been included in the publication “From 2 Arises 3: The Collaborative Works of Arnold Chang and Michael Cherney” published by the University of Hong Kong.

Chang and Cherney’s collaborations have been exhibited internationally, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Kalamazoo Institute of Art, the Crow Museum, the Hong Kong Museum of Art, and the UC Santa Barbara Art, Design, and Architecture Museum.

Chen Danqing (b.1954 in Shanghai, China) is a Chinese-American artist, writer and cultural critic. He graduated from China Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1980, with his celebrated series of realist paintings depicting Tibetians – which breaks away from the dogmatist art style during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Well-known for his oil painting, Chen is also a renowned connoisseur of Chinese culture, which motivates him to self teach Chinese calligraphy through learning masters’ works and develop his own style exemplified in this piece. Chen said that he does not “write” his calligraphy, but rather “paints” it. This resonates with the ideology of “calligraphy and painting share the same origin” (书画同源) which can be traced back to Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). The text of this work is based on a poem by Qin Guan, a Chinese poet active in the 11th century. It expresses the poet’s sorrow and reveals his discontent with the political authority as he was banished to a distant and desolate land. Writing this poem in calligraphy, Chen echoes with Qin Guan and expresses his emotions through the execution of brushstrokes.

Wang Fangyu’s calligraphy was based on traditional expertise but also “modernized.” Based on his perception of the “five principles of nature” (unity, change, balance, force, and motion) and inspired by his scholarship and collection of works by the seventeenth-century painter Bada Shanren, Wang Fangyu unleashed creative inner energy in his calligraphy.

The use of ideographic elements of the Chinese character is remarkable in his calligraphy; in this “Eagle,” the form resembles an eagle standing tall, with its feathers cascading down. This resemblance can be compared to Qi Baishi’s eagle, displayed next to this piece. By infusing the energy of the eagle into the flow of his calligraphy, Wang highlights the pictorial characteristic inherent in Chinese characters.

His work exemplifies the ideology of “calligraphy and painting share the same origin” (书画同源). Among the brushstrokes, there are turnarounds and pauses; he broke through barriers between painting and calligraphy by executing calligraphy with the methods of painting. This is not a deliberate altering of the character’s form in order to write something resembling an eagle, but rather an expression of a feeling and an expression of the inner literati spirit.

Qi Baishi (1864-1957) is one of the most iconic figures in modern Chinese art history. He significantly broadened the themes of traditional Chinese literati painting, incorporating subjects that had previously been overlooked and often employing puns and double meanings. This not only made his work more accessible but also brought Chinese painting and calligraphy closer to everyday life. The sculptor Isamu Noguchi studied painting under Qi Baishi in Beijing; this helped to spread Qi’s techniques and influence to the United States.

The piece is a grand painting featuring a pine tree and an eagle, which Qi Baishi gifted to General Wang Zuanxu (1886-1960) of Sichuan province. The strong, vigorous tree trunk and the meticulously depicted pine needles reflect Qi Baishi’s mastery of brushwork. The detailed portrayal of the eagle, especially its posture and sharp talons, exemplifies Qi Baishi’s lifelong, keen observation of nature, all while exuding a distinct Eastern expressionist style.

Xiao Xun was one of the most influential Chinese landscape painters of the 20th century. His art was rooted in the landscape traditions of the Song and Yuan dynasties, yet he skillfully avoided the rigid styles that characterized the Qing dynasty, showing a refined understanding of classical aesthetics. Early in his career, he trained under Jiang Yun, often assisting him by creating works in Jiang’s style, which helped Xiao develop a solid foundation in brushwork. His travels across China’s famous landscapes enriched his artistic vision, deepening his appreciation for the natural world. After returning to Beijing in 1921, he immersed himself in studying the works of past masters, especially admiring Shitao, Gong Xian, and Mei Qing of the Huangshan School, influences he absorbed and transformed into his own unique style.

Xiao Xun’s landscapes blend the structural beauty of Song and Yuan landscapes with the style of the Huangshan School of the Ming and Qing periods. He mastered Gong Xian’s textured brushstrokes and achieved a natural harmony in his use of techniques, including rubbing, dotting, shading, and a controlled play of dry and wet brushwork. His compositions are dense and layered, with overlapping mountains and rivers that create a profound sense of space and majesty. His brushwork uses layers of ink with smooth transitions between dark and light tones, conveying a powerful, timeless quality. Xiao also added both light red and green-blue hues to his palette, achieving elegant and layered color schemes that reflect traditional Chinese aesthetics while bringing a fresh perspective. His work goes beyond traditional forms, combining his feeling for nature with his own artistic vision, creating a unified style that is both historically grounded and personally expressive. Xiao Xun remains a prominent figure in modern Chinese painting, embodying both artistic depth and innovative spirit.

By the mid-1990s, Wang had been constantly “breaking away from calligraphy’s traditional readability as a literary text, creating a provocative series of abstract calligraphic images.” He began experimenting with a variety of writing implements and applied them on unconventional surfaces. In this particular piece, he inscribes a passage from the Preface of the Orchid Pavilion, a calligraphic masterpiece by renowned calligrapher Wang Xizhi (266–420), using silver felt markers on black construction paper. Despite its experimental and abstract nature, Wang’s calligraphy continues to showcase his powerful bimo (ink and brush). The use of cursive script throughout the composition infuses the piece with an expressive energy, making the strokes feel like musical notes dancing across the paper. This period marks the beginning of Wang’s abstract calligraphy, a style that later evolved to become more colorful and painterly in composition, blending the boundaries between calligraphy and painting.

Building on and challenging traditional practices, Fung Ming Chip’s contemporary shufa (Chinese calligraphy) ventures into innovative realms by integrating elements like musical notation, numbers, and mechanical processes. Fung has created over a hundred of these unique "scripts," each uniquely embodying a feeling or conveying the passage of time.
Starting in the 1990s, Fung began experimenting with incorporating the concept of time into shufa in transformative ways. He layers texture through ink washes and water, creating a sense of depth and dimension. In this particular piece, Fung first wrote characters using water, then overlaid them with ink in light gray tones. The title, White on White, refers to this subtle interplay—light ink applied over water. The imagery in the composition complements the characters, which translate to "a cloud passes above the sea."
While these techniques depart from the conventions of traditional shufa, Fung’s works explore how layers of creation can be embedded within a flat surface, making the chronological sequence of his artistic process visible to viewers.

Yau Wing Fung's Mountains and Red Trees involves different visualizations of yuan (远). It includes high distance, which refers to looking at the mountaintop from the foot of the mountain, and deep distance, meaning viewing one side of a mountain from the other side. Yau's works reframe the idea of guan (观) and yuan (远) through a contemporary lens. "Guan represents my inner sensibility and feeling when I encounter an object; yuan encapsulates my spiritual pursuit when I paint," Yau once wrote. His works offer new expressions of guan and yuan by reconfiguring perspective, pictorial depth, the balance between emptiness and solidness, and surface texture.

C.C. Wang started his painting career rooted in the traditional literati style of Chinese painting, but as his artistic journey progressed, he increasingly embraced diverse techniques and sought creativity in his works. In Dreaming Mountains, Wang created textures by dipping crumpled paper in ink and pressing it onto the surface. These spontaneous marks served as the foundation, which he then observed and connected to form the landscape in a more intuitive way. This experimental approach not only introduces an innovative highlight to the imagery but also exemplifies a significant departure from the conventional method of creating landscape paintings. The novel texture strokes Wang achieved by chance give the landscape a more fluid rhythm, breaking away from the stereotypical flow of traditional landscapes.

By the mid-1990s, Wang had constantly been “breaking away from calligraphy’s traditional readability as a literary text, creating a provocative series of abstract calligraphic images.” He began experimenting with a variety of writing implements and applied them to unconventional surfaces. Unlike the piece near the gallery entrance, which features silver marker on black construction paper, in this particular piece, he inscribes the poem Ascending the Stork Tower by Wang Zhihuan using flat bristle brushes on paper. Despite its experimental and abstract nature, the use of cursive script throughout the composition infuses the piece with an expressive energy, making the strokes feel like musical notes dancing across the paper. This period marks the beginning of Wang’s abstract calligraphy, a style that later evolved to become more colorful and painterly in composition, blending the boundaries between calligraphy and painting.

Description:

The Bamboo Grove Temple, in a serene dark-green setting,
Tolls, from a distance, its bell in the evening.
With a straw hat on his back, he walks in the Sun slanting;
Alone, towards the green mountains the Monk is returning.

Saying Farewell to Monk Lingche-- Liu Changqing (688-742)

Footnote: Liu Changqing (Chinese: 劉長卿, 709–785) , courtesy name Wenfang (文房) was a Chinese poet and politician during the Tang dynasty. Eleven of his poems were collected in the popular anthology Three Hundred Tang Poems. Liu's poems did not receive much praise during his lifetime although he was one of the representative poets during the reign of Emperor Dezong of Tang. However, he was gradually acknowledged by later generations. Liu was especially skillful on the writing of poems with 5 characters.

Shen Chen’s fully abstract paintings demonstrate a study of brushstroke, color, and tonality with a contemporary language. To create his subtle surfaces, Shen paints with a wide variety of traditional Chinese brushes. He layers the surface by moving progressively from top to bottom, in a vertical motion, on his studio floor. The discrete horizontal lines visible on the surface are a record of where each vertical brushstroke began and stopped. It is this meticulous layering of color that achieves the resonant tonal hues of his paintings. His mark-making also represents time, each stroke a kind of beat, introducing a space-time dimension into the work.