Art West Lake · The 2nd International Ink Wash Fair, Booth B04, Lan Zhenghui: Full Moon at West Lake

24-27 May 2019

Hangzhou Peace International Convention and Exhibition Centre

Address: 158 Shaoxing Road, Hangzhou, China

VIP preview: 23 May (Thursday) 19:00-21:00

Public: 24 (Friday), 25 (Saturday), 26 (Sunday) 9:30-17:30     27 (Monday) 9:30-16:00

In the presence of the artist

Artist available for interview by appointment

Co-founded in the 1980s by Alice King, Alisan Fine Arts is one of the first professionally run galleries in Hong Kong and has been a pioneer in the field of Chinese contemporary art and New Ink Art. This year we are proud to debut our participation in “Art West Lake: The 2nd International Ink and Wash Fair.” For this special event, we will be holding a solo exhibition for Lan Zhenghui, an international contemporary ink painter who is best known for his powerful, often large-scale, splash ink paintings, expressing a feeling of excitement and daring, approaching the border of the magnificent. Preferring to focus on the relationship of integration and macroscopic processes over detail and realism, he allows the ink to flow freely and paints with bold, kinetic strokes. A selection of site specific new works will be shown, including a large-scale 8m by 3.5m masterpiece, echoing a work featured at his solo exhibition at Beijing’s Today Art Museum last month.

Lan Zhenghui (b. 1959 Sichuan)

An active participant in the “85 New Wave” Movement, Lan graduated from the prestigious Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 1987. He then taught at Chongqing University until 1993, before devoting himself full-time as an artist, reaching a pivotal point in his career with his selection for a solo exhibition at the National Art Museum of China in 2006. Through his many years researching the language of vision, Lan’s artistic philosophy has evolved to reflect the mantra of one of his favorite artists, Wu Guanzhong: “Good art will shock you.” The viewer does not need to understand the specifics of the painting, but rather connect to a quasi-spiritual experience beyond the work, a feeling that is exciting, yet unexpected.

In 2002 Lan moved to Toronto, Canada, returning to Beijing in 2007 and then travelling between these two locations. In recent years, he has served as an endorsement artist for several European international brands, including German BMW, Schiesser, French Citroën DS, and Italian tailor-made costume, Kiton. He participated in the group exhibition I am in It: Chinese Contemporary Art Expressions jointly organized by Florida Gulf Coast University and Alisan Fine Arts and staged in Florida and Hong Kong, respectively, from 2008 to 2009. Lan’s paintings have been exhibited at Ink Asia in Hong Kong and the West Bund Art Fair in Shanghai in 2018 and in a solo show at the Today Art Museum, Beijing in 2019.

Selected collections:  Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey; Rubell Family Collection Museum, Miami, USA; National Art Museum of China, Beijing; Guangdong Museum of Art, Consulate General or France in Guangzhou, Consulate General of Germany in Guangzhou, Guangzhou; Artron Group, Shenzhen, China.

Alisan Fine Arts and Hangzhou

Alisan Fine Arts, established in Hong Kong in 1981, focuses on promoting mainland Chinese artists as well as established Hong Kong and Chinese diaspora artists. Alisan represents several world-renowned contemporary masters, including Zao Wou-ki, Chao Chung-hsiang, and Chu Teh-chun, all of whom studied under Lin Fengmian at the National Institute of Art, Hangzhou (currently the China Academy of Art). Our gallery represents the Shanghai avant-garde ink artist and scholar Wang Tiande and the new generation multi-media artist Chu Chu, who each earned their PhD from the China Academy of Art. Over the years, under the leadership of Alice King and Daphne King, the gallery has organized over 100 exhibitions in Hong Kong and abroad, including the landmark exhibition A State of Transition: Contemporary Paintings from Shanghai showcasing fourteen artists, including Chen Jialing from Hangzhou and Li Shan from Shanghai. Subsequently, in 1989 the gallery orchestrated Modern Chinese Paintings: A Selection from Beijing, Hangzhou, Sichuan introducing the works of Hangzhou artists Zeng Mi and Jiang Baolin, together with Peng Xiancheng, Nie Ou and Jia Youfu. Furthermore, Alisan Fine Arts curated a solo exhibition for Chao Chung-hsiang to mark Hangzhou’s West Lake Art Museum’s inaugural opening in 1999. Currently, the gallery manages two premises in Central’s business district and Aberdeen, Hong Kong.