Shanghai | Global INK: INKstudio 14 Years On: Bingyi, Chen Haiyan, Kang Chunhui, Lao Tongli, Li Huasheng, Li Jin, Liu Dan, Ren Light Pan, Peng Kanglong, Wang Dongling, Wang Shaoqiang, Wang Tiande, Wei Ligang, Xu Bing, Yang Jiechang, Zheng Chongbin

Global INK: INKstudio 14 Years On reflects on INKstudio’s ongoing research into and engagement with contemporary ink since its founding in 2012. Over fourteen years, INKstudio has explored INK as a medium, language, and intellectual framework, presenting diverse ways in which artists expand its possibilities between tradition and contemporaneity, and across local and global contexts.

The exhibition brings together Bingyi, Chen Haiyan, Kang Chunhui, Lao Tongli, Li Huasheng, Li Jin, Liu Dan, Ren Light PAN, Peng Kanglong, Wang Dongling, Wang Shaoqiang, Wang Tiande, Wei Ligang, Xu Bing, Yang Jiechang, and Zheng Chongbin. Through painting, calligraphy, text, printmaking, installation, and interdisciplinary practices, they reconsider the relationship between ink and the body, nature, language, history, and contemporary life.

For INKstudio, “Global Ink” does not describe a fixed style or singular visual system, but an ongoing practice. Traditional ink is continually re-seen, transformed, and reconfigured through individual artistic experience, entering an increasingly expansive contemporary art context.

In 2023, INKstudio presented Global INK: INKstudio’s Ten Year Anniversary Exhibition, reflecting on its first decade. Fourteen years on, this exhibition revisits these evolving practices, presenting the multiple possibilities of ink today while considering where its language might move next.