Curator’s Talk: Conversation with Artists

An artist, poet, architectural designer, curator, cultural critic, and social activist, Bingyi (b.1975, Beijing) has developed a multi-faceted practice that encompasses land and environmental art, site-specific architectural installation, musical and literary composition, ink painting, performance art, and filmmaking. Adopting a non-anthropocentric perspective and channeling nature’s creative agency, her work is centrally concerned with themes of ecology, ruins, rebirth, and poetic imagination. In her large-scale ink paintings, Bingyi uses ink as “dark light” to illuminate the usually invisible and transient physical processes that enable ordered patterns and forms to arise from chaos. After pursuing university-level studies in biomedical and electronic engineering, Bingyi earned a Ph.D. in Art History and Archeology from Yale University in 2005. Bingyi has exhibited internationally at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2022-2023), Art Basel Hong Kong Encounters (2022, 2017), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2021), and the Brooklyn Museum (2019), among other distinguished institutions.

Fung Ming Chip (b.1951, Guangdong) grew up in Hong Kong, before spending his early adult life in New York and Taiwan. Self-taught, Fung’s career spans nearly four decades and is rooted in the written word first explored through the classical art of seal engraving. The artist later expanded his artistic practice to wood-carving, ink painting, calligraphy, and sculpture. To date, he has developed over one hundred and forty new strains of calligraphy. Positing and predicting new classifications in calligraphic development, Fung undertakes experiments to determine the feasibilities and possibilities inherent within each one. In this way, he not only extends the tradition of calligraphy but also expands its development as a contemporary art form. Major exhibitions include Summoning Memories: Art Beyond Chinese Traditions, Asia Society Texas, 2023; Ink Dreams, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2021; Arts of China: New Acquisitions, Asian Galleries, Brooklyn Museum, New York, 2019.

Works by Kelly Wang (b. 1992, New York) examine and redefine Asian American identity, pushing the boundaries of what ink painting can be. Her visual and conceptual practice is rooted in storytelling, Asian art history, poetry, and psychology. Growing up in a family with a history of collecting and connoisseurship, the artist has been exposed to Chinese art since early childhood. She earned an MA in Art History from Columbia University and a BA in Art History from CUNY Hunter College. Kelly has been experimenting with calligraphy and traditional Chinese painting practices and techniques since 2010 while developing her own artistic practice. Five of her works were acquired by Princeton University Art Museum, where she had a solo exhibition entitled Between Heartlands: Kelly Wang in 2022. She has also exhibited at the Asia Society Houston in 2023 and China Institute NY in 2024.

Sun Xun (b.1980, Fuxin) was born in Fuxin in Liaoning province, China. He currently lives and works in Beijing. He graduated in 2005 from the Printmaking Department of the China Academy of Art. As a representative artist in Chinese New Media Art, Sun Xun established π Animation Studio in 2006 and soon received recognition from exhibitions and awards both domestically and abroad. His animation works have been nominated by the Berlin International Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival. Sun Xun’s visual language consists of metaphoric imagery, dark and intense hand drawing, and dreamy narrative. In recent years, Sun Xun has used New Media Art as a point of origin to explore more possibilities within the expansive realm of visual art. He explores narrative methods using diverse mediums, probes into non-linear expressions of time and space, and inquires into both realistic and fantastical representations based on his own understanding of society and sociological theories.

Zhang Jian-Jun (b.1955, Shanghai) is an abstract artist preoccupied by the themes of existence, time, space, and transformation, and their effects on individuals and culture. He began to pursue abstract painting in the 1980s, with the Chinese ink and mixed media paintings from his 1985 “Existence” series typifying the “rationalistic painting” of the Chinese avant-garde movement. Zhang furthered his studies in the United States in the 1990s and has since shifted his focus to installation art and an exploration of cultural differences between East and West. His Elemental Ink series experiments with Chinese ink and the elements of fire, water and wood (rice paper). He also had solo exhibitions in various locations such as New York, Germany, Japan, and Singapore. These include the Brooklyn Museum, Harvard University in Cambridge, Pace Prints in New York, Shanghai Art Museum in Shanghai, and Guangdong Museum of Art in Guangzhou.

Dr. Susan L. Beningson is an independent curator based in New York City. Her most recent exhibitions include Xu Bing: Word Alchemy (with Owen Duffy) and Summoning Memories: Art Beyond Chinese Traditions (2023) at Asia Society Texas; We The People: Xu Bing and Sun Xun Respond to the Declaration of Independence (Asia Society NY Triennial 2020-2021), and Imperial Treasures: Chinese Ceramics of the Yuan and Ming Dynasties from the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection, currently on view at the Asia Society Museum NY. From 2013 through 2019, she served as a curator of Asian Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Previously, she taught Asian art history at NYU, CUNY, and Columbia University and worked at the Princeton University Art Museum. Dr. Beningson received her doctoral degree in Chinese art and archaeology from Columbia University and an MBA from New York University.