Contemplative Ink

Li Sa (b.1975) Composition with Rocks No. 9, Sextych, 2012 Ink, enamel, gold and silver leaves and mixed media on linen 250 x 100 cm each (98 x 39 in.)

Composition with Rocks No.9 consists of six vertical ink and mixed media paintings, measuring 98” in height and totaling 19.5 feet in width. Li’s works broadens the definition of abstract art as he deconstructs the compositional structures from the canon of Chinese classical ink painting, reconfigures the fragments with contemporary visual elements. In No.9, bicycles saddles, handlebars and male genitalia morphing into the organic forms of lotuses and morning glory flowers, intertwined stem-like vertical lines zigzagging across the pictorial space, Chinese scholar rocks with sharp edges descending from the top of the canvas, precariously angling or collapsing towards the border between panels, all results in a deliberately simple yet dramatically disorienting composition, which is most likely an homage to Ming master painter Bada Shanren, one of Li's major influences. If viewing in the western perspective, the flattened images, bold spontaneous lines and angular geometric forms floating in No. 9 seem to have certain linkage to the Suprematists such as Kandinsky and Malevich yet the compositional formats remain distinctly and deceptively Chinese. In artist’s own words, “Chinese traditional culture values qualities such as calmness, eternity, balance, stability and serenity… At the same time, I want to create something different in my abstract works by incorporating more elements, even seemingly ominous and unsettling images from modern experiences, such as fear, death, impulse, desire, conflict and contradiction.”

Contemplative Ink Beili Liu Wind Drawings: Array, triptych, 2012 Sumi ink on birch panel 36 x 60 in. each

The Wind Drawing: Array is one of her most daring and exciting contemporary ink work of late. Using an air compressor, the artist carefully and strategically pushes ink and water to glide along a coated surface. The drawings capture the sweeping movement of the air current while the ink drift and disburse in response to the force of the air, imprinting fleeting moments of contact between the air and the surface. Her innovative technical approach, the fluidity and exuberance of the visual outcomes recall such works as Yves Klein’s Anthropométrie series.

5 About Beili Liu is a multidisciplinary artist whose time and process based installations explore subjects of cultural specificity and overlaps, transient or persistent energy, and conflicting and confluent forces. Thread, paper, incense, wood, salt, water, these simple materials and compounds are the vehicles by which Beili Liu hand crafts microcosms of fragility and poignancy. By working on these everyday materials, Liu manipulates their intrinsic and bare qualities to extrapolate much more complex cultural narratives. Janet Koplos reviewed her works as being “materially simple but metaphorically rich” (Art in America Review, April 2009).

Beili Liu has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. She has held solo exhibitions at venues such as the Hå Gamle Prestegard, Norwegian National Art and Culture Center, Galerie An Der Pinakothek Der Moderne, Munich, Germany, Elisabeth de Brabant Art Center, Shanghai, Hua Gallery, London, UK, Nordisk Kunst Plattform, Brusand, Norway, the Chinese Culture Foundation, San Francisco, and Buffalo Arts Studio. Liu has been included in group exhibitions at the Museum of Art and History, Santa Cruz, the Austin Museum of Art, Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Alexandra Museum of Art, Louisiana, Grand Rapids Museum of Art, Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, Granary Gallery, Fiskars, Finland, the Kaunas Biennial—a survey of international contemporary fiber art, hosted by the National Gallery in Lithuania, and Hamburg Art Week, Germany.

Liu’s work has received critical reviews from Art in America, Sacchi Review, UK, Helsinki Sanomat News, Finland, Stavanger News, Norway, China Daily, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, China ArtNow, Fiber Quarterly, Canada, Handelsblatt, Germany, Hamburg Abendblatt, Artillery Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Art Slant Los Angeles, Buffalo News, Detroit Metro Times, and Austin Chronicle, among many others.

Liu has received awards and prizes including artist fellowships at Art Farm, Djerassi Foundation, Fiskars AIR Onoma Foundation, Finland, and Fundación Valparaíso, Spain. Her solo exhibition In Between was named one of the “Top Ten Exhibitions in Shanghai” in 2009 by Sacchi Review, UK. Liu received the San Francisco Major’s Award for her contribution to cultural exchange in 2008, and was named twice "Artist of the Year", by Austin Visual Art Association and the Austin Critics Table Awards. In 2011, Liu received a Distinction award at the Kaunas Biennial, Lithuania. Liu received a Walter and Gina Ducloux Fellowship in 2011 and a University of Texas Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award in 2012.

Born in Jilin, China, Liu now lives and works in Austin, Texas, USA. She is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Texas at Austin.

7 Contemplative Ink Ruth Hardinger Envelope No .25, No. 26, and No. 27, 2004 Graphite on handmade paper

Envelopes dovetail between the fantastic and organic, suggesting landscape in some otherworldly location - yet clearly occupying abstraction. Broken and fractured surfaces coincide with mottled, subtlety-dusted passages as each piece evolved during its making. “To embrace, to engulf, to envelop – the words became important concepts for what these works contain, and led me to the title ‘Envelope’.” Upon looking at these works, certain masterpieces by the renowned Chinese ink painter Gao Xingjian come to mind. The two artists’ works possess both abstract and representational visual elements that comprise compositions created from contemplation and inner emotions rather than observations of the external world. Yet Hardinger’s use of graphite and hand-made paper makes the uncanny visual resemblance all the more intriguing as the shapes of the graphite areas continue to evolve on paper after the making, the process of which adds to both the physical and emotional depth of the work.