EN / CH

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Legacies of Literati

Feb. 19th, 2021 - Mar. 28th, 2021



New York – Fou Gallery is delighted to announce our inaugural online exhibition Legacies of Literati. The exhibition includes 21 pieces of selected works, featuring 20th century and contemporary tea room objects. Ever since the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown, objects at home start to play an increasingly important role in our lives. Applied art that is sometimes ignored in the past now comes to the forefront. Among them, we noticed Chinese and Japanese tearoom objects, modern or contemporary, are loaded with so much influence from literati cultures. We hope the audience can use this exhibition to learn more about the stories behind tea room objects and enjoy the aesthetics applied art can bring to us.

Although the concept of literati culture had not appeared until the 20th century, the phenomenon of some elites in China developing connoisseurship in literature, tea, and art has been around since the Wei-Jin era. The interpretation of the term literati culture has changed over time and varies depending on perspectives. In premodern China, literati culture was exclusive to the elite class and mostly male scholars; in premodern Japan, literati culture was a pursuit for officials, samurai, and rich merchants. Literati culture is generally considered to be more “elegant and refined,” in contrast to the demotic culture. Nevertheless, the kind of literati culture around us today is no longer marked by a socioeconomic label and is also free from gender prejudice. What remains from literati culture is probably the type of attitude towards life. This exhibition will examine literati culture from the perspective of lifestyles. We hope this exhibition can draw us closer to daily objects to discern a kind of taste for literature, aesthetics, and philosophy in them.

This exhibition is divided into three sections “Cultural Boundaries,” “Human and Naturanschauung,” and “Transcendence and Immanence.” With two distinctive historical trajectories, the design principles of Chinese and Japanese tea rooms differ. However, individual objects from these tea rooms turn out to share a lot of similarities. Inheriting a shared cultural heritage from the past, Chinese and Japanese artists learned from each other and have shared fantasies about scholarly lifestyles. In the first section, Kawabe Kain’s Moon, Hare, and Waves, Sueharu Fukami’s Cups, and Gao Zhenyu’s Flower Vase with Cloud Pattern all demonstrate how tea room objects can dissolve cultural distinctions. We are not looking at a Chinese-centric cultural heritage, but a legacy shared in the East Asian circle.

In literati culture, the view of nature is a critical component that mirrors one of the literati’s perceptions of the self. The second section of the exhibition brings us to tea room objects that showcase how artists from the 20th century and contemporary era position themselves in relation to nature. For example, Yang Renqian’s flower stand and Sugai Shozo’s bird vase emulate certain elements from nature to find unity and contradictions of dichotomies. Nakamura Soetsu’s tea caddies and Wei Jia’s fan included the artist’s thinking and mind-crafting process in the representation of nature. In all of these works, the relationship between human and nature is more than the expression of emotions through nature. The artists, through distorting nature, attempted to capture a self-concept and look through themselves.

For literati culture, religions like Confucianism and Taoism play a role in setting the framework of literati culture. The third part of the exhibition focuses on tea room objects that could invite more philosophical musings. Although Lin Yan and Yosai lived in different temporal and geographical space, both Lin’s artist panel and Yosai’s scroll raise a question about the existence of some kind of natural law that transcends all the beings but also exists inside of all beings. 

Traveling through time, literati culture has changed in many ways. Literati masculinity has given way to more possibilities. Female artists and artists with non-East Asian backgrounds have benefited from the legacy of literati and enriched our tea rooms today.

 

*We would like to express our special thanks to Thomsen Gallery, artists Wanying Liang, and Gao Zhenyu. This exhibition would not have been possible without their support. 

 

Selected Artists’ Bio

Fukami Sueharu (b.1947, Kyoto)

Fukami Sueharu is one of the most well-known Japanese ceramic artists. He currently works and lives in Kyoto, Japan. Fukami chooses the traditional Seihakuji (qingbai in Chinese) as his medium, and combines the high-pressure slip casting technique in the process. His minimal large-scale ceramic sculptures perfectly demonstrate the serenity and purity of Seihakuji. Fukami’s works are in the collection of many different museums all across the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Brooklyn Museum (New York), British Museum (London), National Museum of Modern Art (Tokyo) and Museum of Fine Art (Boston). His recent shows include Infinite Blue, Brooklyn Museum (2018), Sueharu Fukami: Porcelain Sculptures, Thomsen Gallery (2018), A Distant View: The Porcelain Sculpture of Sueharu Fukami, Portland Japanese Garden (2013), and Contemporary Clay: Japanese Ceramics for the New Century, Museum of Fine Art, Boston (2005).


WEI JIA (b. 1957, Beijing) 

Wei Jia practiced traditional calligraphy, Chinese painting and poetry from an early stage. Wei graduated with a B.F.A from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing (1984) and M.F.A. from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania (1987). He currently works and lives in New York and Beijing. Wei has had numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally, including Central Academy of Fines Arts (Beijing), National Museum of Art (Beijing), CU Art Museum University of Colorado at Boulder (Boulder, U.S.A.), Lincoln Center (New York), etc. His recent shows include The 8th International Ink Art Biennale of Shenzhen, Hua Art Museum, Shenzhen (2019); Blurred Boundaries, New York School of Interior Design Gallery, New York(2018); Wei Jia: Recent Work, Schmidt/Dean Gallery, Philadelphia (2017). Hand-made paper is widely used in traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy. Fascinated by its historical importance and relationship to nature and craft, Wei Jia uses hand-made paper to make abstract collages. 


LIN YAN (b. 1961, Beijing, China)

Born in Beijing, China, Lin Yan has been greatly influenced by her art family since her childhood. After graduating from The Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1984, Lin pursued further studies at L'École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1985. Then she obtained her M.A. from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, U.S.A. (1989). Lin Yan has held solo or group exhibitions at important international institutions, including the Museum of Chinese in America (New York), The National Art Museum in China (Beijing), the Dresden State Art Collection (Germany), He Xiangning Art Museum (Shenzhen), etc. Her recent exhibitions include: Lin Yan: Origin Point, Helwaser Gallery, New York (2019);  Mind the Gap, The Delaware Contemporary, Delaware (2020); The Latent Paradigm: Research on The Statues And Ecology of Chinese Contemporary Art, Today Art Museum, Beijing (2019). Since the 90s, Lin Yan has been inspired by the idea of “five shades of ink” in Chinese ink painting, and started to utilize different black mediums to create two-dimensional and three-dimensioanl artworks. In 2005, she began to use the carrier of ancient Chinese painting—handmade Xuan paper as medium. With the simplest Xuan paper and black and white ink, she creates a sense of weight and layering. Installations with architectural features and sculptures with the painterly characters expand her artistic language. 


RENQIAN YANG (b.1987, Xiangtan, Hunan Province, China) 

Renqian Yang earned her B.F.A. in Ceramics from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Chongqing in 2009 and her M.F.A. in Ceramics from Syracuse University in 2014. Currently, she lives and works in Oswego, New York as an artist and Assistant Professor at the State University of New York at Oswego. Her recent exhibitions include: Renqian Yang, Cayuga Museum of History and Art, Auburn, New York (2019); Renqian Yang and Lan Zhaoxing: Between Mountains, Fou Gallery, New York (2019); Renqian Yang: Construct Deconstruction, Taoxichuan Ceramic Art Avenue Art Gallery, Jingdezhen, China (2018); Renqian Yang: Complementary Colors, Fou Gallery, New York (2016); Rare Earth: National Ceramics Exhibition, Cabrillo Gallery, Aptos, California (2016).Yang is interested in the concept of binaries. Her work addresses the unity and the contradiction of dichotomies: restriction and freedom; pessimism and optimism; complexity and simplicity; representation and abstraction; the man-made world and the natural world. At the same time, her work explores how an individual is related to nature, society, and oneself. 


WANYING LIANG (b. Shaanxi, China)

Liang Wanying was born in northwest China. She received BFA from China Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing. Before moving to America to study ceramics at Alfred University in 2016, Liang set up her studio in Jingdezhen to make art pieces and tableware. In April 2018, she was awarded MFA and had her thesis exhibition in Turner Gallery, showcasing a summary for her years' study. Liang explores complex emotions, misreading, ritual, and mystery in her expressive sculpture and installation.


Curators’ Bio

Sharon Xiaorong Liu is a curator, art history researcher, and freelance writer. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in art history and math from Wellesley College, and obtained her master’s degree from Yale University in East Asian Studies. She has assisted with the implementation of the Art and China after 1989 exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum, and the Icons of New China photography exhibition at Yale-China. As a freelance writer, she has written for CAFA ART INFO and has also worked as a Chinese editor for the Museum 2050 Looking to New Institutional Models conference essay anthology.


Ziyan Luo graduated from New York University with a MA degree in Visual Arts Administration. She focused on the nonprofit track during her study at NYU. For her master thesis, Luo researched two Asian American artists’ collectives, the Basement Workshop and Godzilla, and discussed how they had improved the visibility and representation of Asian arts in American society. Besides curating, she is also responsible for writing for social media posts and event planning at Fou Gallery. She has organized a series of events, including A Taste of Ikebana (2020) and Inner Senses: Dancing at Dawn (2020). 


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