In this piece, the sun has already set on the glum scene. As our eyes adjust to the darkness, a construction site comes into view. A herd of sheep meanders among bare pillars of poured concrete, appearing out of place and lost. Here, Wang Gongxin bears witness to the rapid transformation of his hometown, Beijing, following the late ’80s and early ’90s reforms. Wang blurs boundaries between old and new, urban and rural, reality and memory.

© Wang Gongxin, photo: Maurice Aeschimann, Geneva

In this diptych, natural forces and the passage of time become active participants in the creative process. On the left, the characters “mountains and waters” or simply, “landscape” (shanshui) can be clearly read. On the right, they are almost entirely erased by the forces at work. Landscape painting in water and ink takes concrete form as three manifestations of water: landscape (“mountains, water” or shanshui), ink (“ink water” or moshui), and ice (“ice water” or bingshui), together spelling the title of the piece.

Hiroshi Sugimoto is one of the most gifted photographers active today. In creating this series, Sugimoto referenced early experiments with electricity by such pioneers as Benjamin Franklin and William Fox Talbot. In 2009 the artist set up in his darkroom a 400,000-volt Van De Graaff generator which sent bolts of electricity through film onto a metal table while he manipulated the sparking bolts with metal kitchen utensils. The resulting images often resemble vascular systems and highly-energy cosmic events.

Born out of a collaboration with the Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Lin Tianmiao’s Seeing Shadows series (2005–12) combines large-scale photographic prints with her signature material of white thread. Known for her thread-bound sculptures, Seeing Shadows presents a rare foray into two-dimensional wall-hanging artwork for Lin.

© Lin Tianmiao, photo: Maurice Aeschimann, Geneva

In his Divine Light series, Zhang Yu sought to erase any trace of his own identity, consciously painting in a way that disguised his brush strokes and choosing a subject disconnected from his own lived experience: a mysterious primeval light. He sees these works as an experimental combination of ink art and Western techniques, which he used to explore the boundaries of ink painting.

© Zhang Yu, photo: Maurice Aeschimann, Geneva

In order to create the deep black pigment that defines his Hundred Layers of Ink series, Yang Jiechang paints layer over layer of rich black ink over his paper—here building up a textured fingerprint—punctuated by a top layer of shimmering glue. The result is a magnified marker of his identity, one in a set of five large-scale fingerprint paintings. Yang sees himself as a new literati artist, and ink is equally foregrounded here as a part of his identity.

© Yang Jiechang, photo: Maurice Aeschimann, Geneva

In an early work by gu wenda, surrealist landscape #3, the indiscernible forms and disordered lines are reminiscent of works by Wassily Kandinsky, while certain combinations of forms and lines resemble characters in the ancient seal script of Chinese calligraphy. They are, however, detached, synthesized, misplaced, overlapped, miswritten, negated, and inverted. The character-like forms challenge and inhibit the viewer’s attempt to ascribe meaning. The notion of “unreadability” here paved the way for the artist’s fully developed creation of pseudo-characters.

Composed of elegant, dynamic dances between the black ink and white acrylic, Zheng Chongbin’s monochromatic paintings are the result of a conglomeration of theories and aesthetics pulled from Western and Eastern artistic canons. Through his practice, Zheng explores the fundamental elements which make up our world, including recurring geometries present in both macro and micro structures within the cosmos. Complementary pieces, Dissolved Geometry C and Dissolved Geometry B are symbolic of the numerous dualities found in the natural world.

This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

This exhibition is made possible through the generosity of the Fondation INK. All exhibitions at LACMA are underwritten by the LACMA Exhibition Fund.