INK Studio

Peng Kanglong 彭康隆

Jade Inlaid Vermilion Sky 彤天栽玉

2022
Ink on paper
240 x 145 cm x 3 panels
(PKL055)

In the triptych Jade Inlaid Vermillion Sky, Peng Kanglong uses the xuejing or “snowy landscape” method to paint a fantastic, imaginary garden scene in which peonies float like white clouds in a vermillion sky and intertwine with spindly, black garden rocks jutting from the blue-green ground. Just as in a snow landscape where empty sky is painted gray and the solid ground is left untouched, Peng renders the solid forms of the peonies and its branches in liubai or “untouched white” while painting the sky a soft vermillion hue. Furthermore, through the play of light and shadow on the thick, fibrous texture of his bespoke paper, Peng’s conjures substance and dimensionality to the peony’s booms and twisting branches reserved in untouched white.

$188,000

INK Studio

Peng Kanglong 彭康隆

Facsimile of Flowers 花帖

2021
Ink on paper
70 x 141 cm
(PKL062)

In the composition Facsimile of Flowers, Peng Kanglong confronts us with two widely divergent experiences of space. In the extremely close foreground to the right, peonies and an early summer-flowering shrub—perhaps a wild dog rose—blossom before a jade green garden rock. To the immediately left of this arrangement, space recedes tens of miles into a misty canyon of blue stone. By adding an upright poppy on the far left and two peony blooms that bow into the very center of the composition, Peng heightens this tension in depth and distance between a garden—which we experience up front in relatively shallow depth—and a landscape—which we experience from afar with a sense of deep recession. This paradoxical juxtaposition, conflation, or mixing of extremely shallow and extremely deep recession is unique to Peng Kanglong’s flower-landscapes and extends the spatial possibilities afforded by traditional compositional methods such as the sanyuan or “Three Distances” inherited from Northern Song landscape composition.

$56,000

INK Studio

Peng Kanglong 彭康隆

Fragrant and Flourishing Orchids 幽兰芳霭

2023
Ink on paper
75 x 145 cm
(PKL070)

Brushwork, light, spatial depth and negative space are critical to understanding Peng Kanglong's chimeric flower-landscapes. In Fragrant and Flourishing Orchids, Peng renders his compositions using the cunfa or "fine texture strokes" of landscape painting combining them with established shuanggou "outline-and-fill” and mogu "boneless" methods of traditional flower painting. Like landscape texture strokes, Peng's flower texture strokes are based on calligraphy but instead of running or regular script strokes, he employs caoshu or "cursive" and specifically kuangcao or "wild cursive" strokes to render both form and space. These wild cursive texture strokes are not employed in a daxieyi or "boldly calligraphic" expression but rather in a dense and refined, virtuosic performance— brimming with energy but at the most minute and intimate scale.

$55,000

INK Studio

Peng Kanglong 彭康隆

Paths of Spring Flowers 烟花径

2023
Ink on paper
75 x 145 cm
(PKL073)

In Paths of Spring Flowers, Peng Kanglong employs his flower-landscape texture strokes to render not only the forms of his trees, flowers and grasses but also the light and space in which his subjects live and breathe. Normally in flower painting, this space is left "untouched" or "empty"—liubai and kongbai in classical parlance—but here, Peng fills this empty space with his dense, energetic brushwork. Paradoxically, his paintings still breathe, not with the emptiness of untouched paper but rather with the translucent, luminescent light of his dilute color-and-ink tones. To appreciate Peng's virtuosic brushwork, one must get very close to his works and immerse oneself in the intensity, spontaneity, discipline and utter freedom of his color, ink and line.

$55,000

INK Studio

Peng Kanglong 彭康隆

The Withered Blossoms No. 2

2020
Ink on paper
39 x 29 cm
(PKL039)

In his series The Withered Blossoms, Peng Kanglong pursues pure flower painting in the intimate format of the album leaf.  In No. 2 in the series, the artist works in a monochrome blue in which his eponymous blossoms are rendered with white pigmented brushwork.  As in his larger flower-landscape compositions, Peng renders his floral forms and the compositional space they occupy using the cunfa or "fine texture strokes" of landscape painting combined with the established shuanggou "outline-and-fill” and mogu "boneless" methods of traditional flower painting.

$5,000

INK Studio

Peng Kanglong 彭康隆

The Withered Blossoms No. 12

2020
Ink on paper
39 x 29 cm
(PKL049)

In his series The Withered Blossoms, Peng Kanglong pursues pure flower painting in the intimate format of the album leaf.  In No. 12 in the series, the artist works in a deep monochrome red. Peng renders his intimate portrait of a single peony bloom and a slender scholar’s rock with his his dense and energetic flower-landscape texture strokes. By modulating the density of his brushwork and the saturation of his monochrome reds, Peng evokes a sense of light and space in which his subjects live and breathe. Normally in flower painting, this space is left "untouched" or "empty"—liubai and kongbai in classical parlance—but here, Peng fills this empty space with his dense, energetic brushwork. Paradoxically, his paintings still breathe, not with the emptiness of untouched paper but rather with the translucent, luminescent light of his dilute color-and-ink tones.

$5,000

INK Studio

Li Jin 李津

The Heart Sutra 心经

2020
Ink and Color on Paper
176 x 176 cm, 186 x 186 cm with borders
(LJ405)

In The Heart Sutra, Li Jin presents us with one of his fantastic, imaginary banquet scenes. Here, his guest list includes historical celebrities such as German social theorist Max Weber, James Bond actor Sean Connery and Ramones drummer Marky Ramone; real people Li Jin has encountered in the streets of Osaka, New York and Berlin; people and animals sporting a variety of masks including those of plague physicians during Europe’s Black Death, oxygen respirators of aviators from World Wars I and II, masks for animals particularly dogs and pigs, and perhaps even masks for S&M role play; and finally no less than eight portraits of the artist himself as Norman soldier, Elizabethan tradesman, Brooklyn hipster, befuddled ski accident victim, disgruntled artist, and Edwardian chauffeur amongst others.

In front of the assembled diners, Li Jin depicts an unending bounty of exotic delicacies such as chicken heads and feet, boar’s head and fresh eel, grubs and caterpillars; banquet favorites such as lobster, whole fish, sushi, fat pork and 110-proof, distilled Maotai liquor; and everyday favorites such as boiled dumplings, frog’s legs, hot dogs, bok choy and radishes.

Throughout this unfolding indulgence, however, Li Jin inscribes his painting with texts from the Buddhist liturgy: the Repentance Master Cíyún's Pure Land Verses, the Compassionate Repentance of Emperor Liang, the eponymous Heart Sutra, the Eight Verses in Praise of Maitreya, and the Compassionate Samadhi Water Repentance, amongst others. Chanting these texts or writing them as Li Jin does here, is an act of repentance—a means of accumulating merit to counterbalance a life of ongoing attachment and sin.

Indeed, at the center of the composition is the headless, Willendorf-proportioned torso of a female figure. Unabashedly ample bodies are a recurring theme in Li Jin’s painting and convey the inescapable corporeal nature of human existence and its incumbent pleasures and desires. Here, it serves both as a celebration of the body and its power to give life and as a very personal confession to the desire such bodies invoke.

As New York-based writer and critic Jeffrey Hantover once observed, “Li Jin’s battle between indulgence and moderation—the devil and monk within him—and self and selflessness is constant.  Great art comes from conflict, internal and external—the law versus natural morality in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn … or the personal battle with addiction and despair in O’Neil’s Long Day’s Journey into Night. Whether Li Jin wins or loses the fight, we the viewers of his most human and affecting art continue to be the winners.”

$225,000

INK Studio

Li Jin 李津

Good Artists

2019
Ink and color on paper
45.5 x 34 cm
(LJ400)

In Good Artists, Li Jin documents his excursion to a landmark New York institution for the exhibition of international Modern art—can you tell which one?  In this scene, an athletic young woman and a uniformed and bespectacled security guard—both clad in black—engage in conversation while a bearded man sporting blue jeans, Nike high-tops and a windbreaker peers through his sunglasses as this encounter unfolds. Is he watching the conversation or is he checking out the young lady or is he looking at us the viewer? We ask ourselves: Are they artists? And if so, are they “good artists”? Or are the good artists in the exhibition and by exclusion the rest of us are just not so good artists?

$15,000

INK Studio

Li Jin 李津

Morning Exercise in New York IV

2019
Ink and color on paper
33 × 24.5 cm
(LJ391)

In his Morning Exercise in New York series, Li Jin documents his morning excursions during his month-long stay in New York in the Fall of 2019.  In number IV of the series, Li Jin combines traditional portraiture with his art school training in Socialist Realism to sketch a young woman standing perhaps at a cross-walk. As he frequently does in his figure painting, Li Jin includes himself in the composition turning this into a self-portrait with an anonymous stranger. As with many of Li Jin’s morning exercises, his subject is observed from a distance, here from behind. The artist must thus tell the story of this young woman—and by extension his own story—using nothing more than body posture.

$8,600

INK Studio

Li Jin 李津

Morning Exercise in New York VII

2019
Ink and color on paper
33 × 24.5 cm
(LJ394)

In his Morning Exercise in New York series, Li Jin documents his morning excursions during his month-long stay in New York in the Fall of 2019.  In number VII of the series, Li Jin is clearly captivated by a young, African-American woman. He deftly employs the tools of traditional portraiture—namely achieving a “resonance with his subject’s energy” and capturing the “bone structure” of his subject’s figure—to chuanshen “transmit the spirit” of his anonymous admiration. Li Jin adds himself in the background observing his subject from a distance while she herself appears innocent of his interested gaze.

$8,600

INK Studio

Li Jin 李津

Floating Rainbow No. 1

2017
Ink and color on paper
35 x 35 cm
(LJ419)

In his Floating Rainbow series, Li Jin documents his experience joining the Los Angeles Pride Parade and Festival during the Summer of 2017. In No. 1 of the series, a bearded, somewhat paunchy gay couple with matching red tank-tops stride past. In the background a revealingly clad leather cowboy looks away while two women rendered in polychrome pastels watch, like us, the scene unfold before them. Li Jin clearly delights in the festive joy, colorful freedom of expression, and unabashed display of flesh—all recurrent themes in his traditional figure paintings of contemporary China—only this time found half way across the world at LA Pride.

$12,000

INK Studio

Li Jin 李津

Floating Rainbow No. 2

2017
Ink and color on paper

35 x 35 cm
(LJ420)

In his Floating Rainbow series, Li Jin documents his experience joining the Los Angeles Pride Parade and Festival during the Summer of 2017. In No. 2 of the series, a young European-American man holding a camera and older African-American women holding a sign with the word “Resistance” walk together. Li Jin must have liked this scene because he paints himself into the composition as the onlooker in a blue and green shirt and fuchsia dog-eared cap. LA’s Pride Parade and Festival is a community gathering of people celebrating diversity and individuality. At the same time, it is public forum for political action and mobilization. For LGBTQ+ communities in the United States, community celebration and political mobilization are inseparable aspects of an ongoing social movement and Li Jin looks on with excitement and admiration.

$12,000