Liu Kuo-Sung Ink Art Award 2023

Liu Kuo-sung Ink Art Award 2023

 

The Liu Kuo-sung Foundation and The Ink Society are delighted to present the Liu Kuo-sung Ink Art Award 2023. The Liu Kuo-sung Ink Award is a biennial award that recognises outstanding achievement in the creation of contemporary ink art in the Greater China region. The Award was established and funded by Liu Kuo-sung in 2019, with the aim to highlight and promote the artistic practices of emerging ink artists.

This year is the third edition of the Award. There is a new panel of observers and jurists, with the exception of Liu Kuo-sung who has continued to serve as a jurist. The distinguished panel of observers and jurists is composed of curators, scholars, and critics.

For each edition of the prize, observers propose candidates for consideration by the jury. The nominated candidates must be born in or after 1983, and must be born or working in the Greater China region. The submitted ink artworks must be 2D that can be displayed on a wall, excluding video art. The jury then decides on the winner and up to two honourable mentions, based on the past five years of work.

After two rounds of judging, the Liu Kuo-sung Foundation and the Ink Society are delighted to announce Zhang Xiaoli (b. 1989, lives and works in Beijing and Toronto) as the winner of the third edition of the Liu Kuo-sung Ink Art Award. Zhang Xiaoli is awarded a cash prize of HKD100,000. Honourable mentions have been awarded to Ling Pui Sze (b. 1989, lives and works in Hong Kong) and Mateo (b. 1997, lives and works in Hangzhou).

On behalf of the Jury, Dr. Xie Suzhen, Jurist, comments:

‘Zhang Xiaoli's Pockets of Seclusion

The third "Liu Kuo-sung Ink Art Award" in 2023 invited experts and scholars from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, Qiu Ting, Lin Haizhong, Feng Bin, Pi Li, and Kao Chien-Hui, to serve on the nominating committee. Each expert recommended three young artists (below the age of 40), for a total of fifteen practitioners participating in the first selection round. Five scholars and experts, Liu Kuo-sung, Lin Mu, Xie Suzhen, Tina Pang, and Andy Hei, served as jury members. First, online scoring was used to determine the six finalists with the highest average scores. Then the shortlisted artists were requested to provide three original works from the past five years to aid in the final selection process in Hong Kong. The five jury members held a meeting in Hong Kong on the afternoon of August 2. After thorough discussion, Zhang Xiaoli, based in Beijing and Toronto, was voted the winner of the third "Liu Kuo-sung Ink Art Award".

Zhang Xiaoli was born in Guizhou, China in 1989. She entered the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2008, where she received a dual first-class honours degree in Fine Arts and Biology in 2014. In 2021, Zhang was awarded a master's degree from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing where she is currently pursuing a doctorate.

Using Lego blocks, convenience food containers, and women's handbags to create deconstructed personal landscapes, Zhang Xiaoli marks life's experiences by regressing them into something greater than their common denominator of tradition. Whispers of dark smoke seem to float across a painting's surface as though one's mind is travelling through a landscape, but the landscape itself is trapped within a vessel. Just like modern people floating in the sea, the intertwining and entanglement of her Fine Arts and Biology majors has not only endowed Zhang with a delicate artistic sensibility, but shot it through with logical thinking, much like a fine embroidered brocade. This combination engenders a desire for tree branches that reach out from a wall to embrace the moon, even though they are tightly shackled to a graceful piece of porcelain. These are the hidden valleys of seclusion that people yearn for within the hustle and bustle of the contemporary world!

Art can process human emotions better than people. Only those with the talent to give themselves up to art can find this gap, a gap where there is calm and clarity. No longer about following a master's style or painting from nature, what can be seen in Zhang Xiaoli's work is beyond the mysteries of spirit resonance and vitality.’

 

We extend our warmest thanks to the Observers and Members of the Jury:

Observers
Feng Bin (Director, Chongqing Art Museum)
Kao Chien-Hui (Independent curator and art critic, Taipei)
Lin Haizhong (Artist; Deputy Director of the Chinese Painting and Calligraphy Connoisseurship Center, China Academy of Art, Hangzhou)
Pi Li (Head of Art, Tai Kwun, Hong Kong)
Qiu Ting (Artist; Professor, China Academy of Art, Beijing)

Members of the Jury
Andy Hei (Director, The Ink Society, Hong Kong)
Lin Mu (Researcher, China National Academy of Painting, Beijing)
Liu Kuo-sung (Artist, Taipei)
Tina Pang (Curator of Hong Kong Visual Culture, M+, Hong Kong)
Xie Suzhen (Director, Today Art Museum, Beijing)

The winner and the two honourable mentions have been invited to exhibit their work at the Ink Society booth. The official award ceremony will take place on Saturday 7 October at the Ink Society lecture room. Liu Kuo-sung will present the Award.

In addition, due to the low turnout in previous years as a result of social unrest and Covid-19, we are showcasing the work of the winners of the 2019 (Wu Chi-tsung) and 2021 (Bian Kai) editions, as well as the winner of the special one-off Hong Kong edition of 2022 (Hung Fai). This year is the first international edition of Fine Art Asia & Ink Asia since 2019, so we are delighted to be able to present their works to a wider audience.