Hanart TZ Gallery is pleased to present the duo exhibition of Cheng Tsai-Tung and Chen Heng, opening on 17 December 2022. The exhibition features new paintings from the last few years, displayed against selected examples of earlier works.

In recent years, Cheng Tsai-Tung has increasingly shifted to a state of solitude in which his interlocutors remain the ancients alone. Through classical poetry, he has slowly found ways to crystallize these complex sentiments into a faint melancholy. He condenses his personal tales and sensibility into the mise-en-scène of colourful moonlight, and at the same time morphs himself into a sentient being within the stream of history.

Cheng Tsai-Tung’s contemplative anxiety about the passing of time, and the fragility and preciousness of life drive him on the path of creation. His pursuit of archaic style is a testament to his many years of research travels around China. Although Cheng Tsai-Tung refuses the traditional paths of ink painting, his persistent search for the archaic spirit has opened a personal approach. In these paintings, we can see his engaged interest in ink and brush, his relish in the charm of awkwardness and playfulness, as well as the inner reserve of his personality that flashes out of the silence.

Chen Heng emphasizes “realization” and “transcendence” in his art. In four decades of artistic journey, he has continuously sought to sublimate his representational skills and to refine images to seek the cultural meaning of imagery. He deconstructs the ingredients of oil painting to seek aesthetics that suit a Chinese context. This includes his interpretation of the ‘negative’ space of ink painting (the ‘blank’ liubai) as an extra-visual context and highlighting visual scenes as mental ‘events’ and ‘things’.

Gallery address: 2/F, Mai On Industrial Building, 19 Kung Yip Street, Kwai Chung