Frieze Magazine | Shows | Ink: One Day in June

Previous Shows

Ink: One Day in June

Two words sum up the premise of ‘Ink: One Day in June’: spontaneity and dialogue. As such, this exhibition is in tune with its venue; Studio X Beijing is part of a plan by
Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture to create spaces of exchange, communication and research in key cities throughout the world. Central to the Global
Studio X Network Initiative is the idea that ‘future thinking must be collaborative’. ‘Ink: One Day in June’ featured in a series of three panel discussions and exhibits in New York
and Beijing, which explored ink’s potential as an ineffable medium capable of reflection on elusive aspects of creative expression and artistic interaction.

The show features work by four contemporary artists. Most arresting are Qin Feng’s large untitled paintings, dominated by a thick black central ring and marked by motion with splatters, blots and rapid circular strokes. These dynamic, gestural compositions contrast strongly with Liang Quan’s ‘Tea Diary Series’ (2008) on the opposite wall. Accumulated and presented together as if on a grid, the round stains left by daily cups of tea convey a feeling of the passage of time and of muted personal moments. The comparison created an engaging dialogue between two artists’ use of a circular form, and the harnessing of that to such divergent methods and moods: one outwardly physical and instantaneous, the other habitual and meditative – a kind of domestic abstraction. Small, surreal images like Moon Digger (2008), taken from ‘Series: works with no series’ by George Chang, are spontaneous – though using gouache, not ink – in that they begin from a random line or colour that the artist then builds into a highly- finished depiction; this is left unanchored in white space, as if suspended in the mind’s eye.

Chang’s works claim a degree of similitude with Michelle Fornabai’s painting One Day in June (2010). Fornabai’s method of ‘developing the chance mark through material transpositions and conceptual associations’ to create paintings ‘constituted between intention and improvisation’ might be more simply put in Chang’s words: ‘I let the work bring me in’. Both employ ‘automatic’ means to make art. One Day in June is part of the ‘Synesthesia Series’, which investigates the relationship between different stimuli, in this case a song, and their associations for the artist. Hearing the song precipitates, informs and sustains an unwilled action: painting.

The show’s second theme, dialogue, was enacted in short films made to accompany the exhibition that recorded the artists literally ‘conversing’ through the medium, wordlessly painting in turns on the same sheet of paper and in direct response to each other. Unfortunately, however, these were shown only at the opening, a significant loss for subsequent visitors to the exhibition. This multifaceted exhibition and the lines of communication it purports to open suggest positive new approaches. Fornabai’s vision and highly complex diction loomed large in the accompanying texts, and physically too because her work, laid on the floor, made greater demands on the viewer to perceive it whilst the others hung obediently on the surrounding walls. Some might also find problematic that two out of the four artists’ works used not ink, but tea and gouache; Fornabai’s work, it seems, was the only one created specifically for the show, which arguably compromises the aim for direct dialogue. Ultimately however, ‘Ink: One Day in June’ was indicative of a timely shift of attention towards new paths of expression and experimentation in ink, and the compelling rejuvenation of a medium so particular and essential to Chinese culture.

Iona Whittaker