Ink at Current

The International Ink Art Biennale of Shenzhen is rooted in “The 1st International Ink Wash Painting Invitation Exhibition 1988 Beijing” (renamed in 1998) and had witnessed 30 years’ of development. Over the past three decades, the biennale brought forward advanced academic subjects like “metropolitan ink,” “design and ink,” “new media and ink,” and “ink and space,” making itself a long-standing international art event that closely has its finger on the pulse of China’s ink art. “Shenzhen Forum for Ink Painting,” held as an accompany of the biennale provides academic basis for the biennale but still has a lot to do in collecting and sorting theoretic achievements of the biennale. The biennale will welcome its 10th session at the 30 years’ anniversary, which is an important mark in development of the biennale because it not only examines creation, practice and exhibition of ink art in the past 30 years but also a starting point from which the biennale will go further in theory.

Both the biennale and the forum take Ink at Current as theme to show their academic as well as theoretic features and to study ink art’s characteristics in our times since the reform and opening up 40 years ago, which include the traditional ink language’s change in contemporaneity, the conscious innovation of ink under the historic background, the contemporary transformation of ink, presentation of ink in contemporary art and achievements of Shenzhen’s ink art in the past 40 years. Dong Xiaoming acts as the chief curator of the biennale. Shang Hui, Ji Shaofeng, Wu Hongliang and Yang Xiaoyang act as curators of four feature exhibitions (Supreme Paradigm, Boundless Ink, Referring to Old and Enlightening the Present and Mature Forty) and academic hosts of ink forum respectively. 96 artists at home and abroad and 19 theoreticians will be invited attend the events and more than 300 works will be displayed at the biennale. Work album and collection of thesis will be published. Xu Zhang (director of Shenzhen Fine Art Institute), Luan Qian (former director of OCAT Shenzhen) and Bi Dasong (present director of OCAT Shenzhen) act as coordinators. Yang Yang and Ren Sisi are designers of the events. As co-organizers of the events, Shenzhen Fine Art Institute, OCAT Shenzhen and OCT Art ＆ Design Gallery will bring the best of the biennale and forum through nearly two years’ close cooperation.