Media packet with high-resolution images are available at http://www.inkstudio.com.cn/abhk2017
Encounters: Booth 3E16
March 23 - 25, 2017
Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre, 1 Harbour Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong, China
For the Encounters section of Art Basel | Hong Kong 2017, INK studio is proud to work with artist Bingyi and installation designer Bricks Li to create an immersive installation of Bingyi’s monumental 2013 work Wanwu—one in a series of land and weather works created on sacred mountains throughout China. Literally “ten thousand things,” wanwu refers to all the entities and beings in the universe. Collaborating with the natural elements of wind, sun, humidity, air pressure, and terrain on site, Bingyi uses ink—carbon, an absolute absorber of light, suspended in water—on xuan paper as "dark light" to illuminate the usually invisible and transient forces of geology and climate that shape our world.
Located at booth 3E16, INK studio’s Encounters presentation consists of two 22-meter panels from Wanwu installed on two outward-facing slopes, with one steeper than the other. Over eight meters tall, the slopes are curved, vertical on top and flattening towards the bottom. The installation recreates the terrain encountered by the artist and her sense of ascent and circulation, while the textures and details of the panels subtly record the atmospheric effects and topographical features of the site. Although the work is ink on paper, its viewing experience is not illusionistic or representational as in a painting, but immersive, corporeal, and spatial.
This is the first time Bingyi’s large-scale land-art ink works are exhibited in an international art fair. Other works in the series have been exhibited at major institutional venues, including the Smart Museum of Art, the University of Chicago (2010), Chicago, U.S.A.; St. Johannes-Evangelist-Kirche, Berlin, Germany (2012); Ciutat Vella in Valencia, Spain (2014); Nuit Blanche in Toronto, Canada (2014) and Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport, Shenzhen, China (2015).
Bingyi is an architectural designer, writer, curator, cultural critic, and social activist whose practice encompasses land and environmental art, site-specific architectural installation, musical and literary composition, ink painting, and performance art. Born in Beijing in 1975, she graduated from Yale University with a Ph.D. in Art History and Archeology in 2005 with a dissertation on the art of the Han Dynasty. She has exhibited in Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Alicante, Alicante, Spain (2014); St. Johannes-Evangelist-Kirche, Berlin, Germany (2012); Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, Chicago, USA (2010); Galerie Erna Hecey, Brussels, Belgium (2009); Contrasts Gallery, Shanghai, China (2009); and Max Protetch Gallery, New York, USA (2008). Her works have been included in the group exhibitions Humanistic Nature and Society - A People's Biography, Shanghai Himalaya Museum, Shanghai, China (2016), Till It's Gone: An Exhibition on Nature and Sustainability, Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, Istanbul, Turkey (2016), Surveyors, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, USA (2011), and Yipai, the Opening of the New Wing, Today Art Museum, Beijing, China (2009), and featured in the 7th Gwangju Biennale, Annual Report: A Year in Exhibitions, Gwangju, South Korea (2008).
Bingyi's works can be found in the Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA; White Rabbit Contemporary Chinese Art Collection Sydney, Australia; and the collections, among others, of, the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, Chicago, USA; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Alicante, Alicante, Spain; and Museum of Chinese Women and Children, Beijing, China. She is the subject of three documentaries: The Enduring Passion for Ink—A Series on Contemporary Ink Painters: Bingyi's Madness, on Bingyi's process as an ink painter, filmed by Richard Widmer and directed by Britta Erickson; Shape of the Wind, on Bingyi's land and weather art, and Epoché, on Bingyi's Shenzhen airport performance and event, both filmed and edited by Richard Widmer.