Over 1,000 works of art will be offered across six sales during Asia Week, featuring a striking and diverse array of Chinese ceramics, sculpture, works of art, paintings and calligraphy. Don't miss our article Contemporary Art migrates to the East | The recent history of the chinese contemporary art market.
"Asia Week New York" is an annual ten-day celebration of Asian art throughout metropolitan New York, with non-stop exhibitions, auctions and special events presented by leading international Asian art specialists, major auction houses, and world-renowned museums and cultural institutions. Every year "Asia Week New York" is the premier destination for Asian art collectors, curators, scholars and enthusiasts.
BUT WHAT WE CAN EXPECT FROM THIS YEAR?
From September 7 to 15, "Asia Week in New York" will be a true show with regular dealers open to the public around the city, dedicated to showcasing traditional and contemporary examples of the best of Asian painting, sculpture, ceramics, photography and more.
- Onishi Gallery presents "Carving White Translucence: Peter Hamann," a solo exhibition of leading ceramic artist Peter Hamann. Born in Nebraska in 1956, Hamann moved to Japan as a young adult to study Yabunouchi-style tea ceremony. His passion for Japanese culture led him to stay in Japan and pursue the ceramic arts, ultimately enabling him to teach Japanese ceremonial tea techniques and gain his Japanese citizenship. This exhibition showcases the stunning and innovative ceramic pieces that Hamann has refined over the decades, uniquely drawing upon his American roots and Japanese aesthetics.
- Erik Thomsen Gallery presents an exhibition of porcelain sculptures by Sueharu Fukami (b. 1947), who is widely regarded as one of the greatest ceramic artists of the last forty years. The show will feature around twenty porcelain works with pale-blue glazes created between 1980 and 2018, including two larger scale vertical works, Kei from 2015 and Kō (Splendid Solitude) from 2018, and a true tour-de-force titled Ten (Firmament) from 2013, a wheel-thrown vessel of imposing proportions. The show will also include smaller works, such as vases and incense boxes.
- HK Art and Antiques LLC presents the “Life of Women," an exhibition of work by female artists from both East and West. There are three Korean artists, one British artist and one Scottish artist: Hai Ja Bang, Su Kwak, Elizabeth Keith, Tricia Wright, and Myong Hi Kim. These artists, whose work ranges from the figurative to the abstract, use different techniques and materials. In addition to the paintings, there are two Korean 20th century Bojagi (traditional Korean wrapping cloth) on view.
- Dai Ichi Arts, Ltd. is presenting the work of contemporary Japanese ceramic artist HIRUMA Kazuyo 昼馬和代, which will be the first time her award-winning ceramics are shown in New York. "HIRUMA Kazuyo: Memories of Water and Earth" will feature a series of works that highlight Hiruma’s investigation of how memory and erosion come forth in aquatic and terrestrial forms. Ceramic sculptures depicting water and earth inspire nuanced explorations of how these two natural forces interact with time.
- Kai Gallery presents a group exhibition by nine contemporary artists, including Jared FitzGerald, Han Bing, Min Yiming, Beili Liu, Zhou Rong, Hui Chi Lee, Soon Sik Kim, Gan Daofu, and Myungwon Kim. Aligning with KAI Gallery’s mission, these artists view traditional East Asian culture as a continuous source of inspiration to their artistic creations. This group exhibition generates discussions of our world in the past, present, and future.
- Zetterquist Galleries will be holding an informal exhibition of Chinese and Japanese Ceramics. This exhibition features a rare mid-17th century Kokutani plate with notched square form and a masterful painting of a Peacock standing on a rock, surrounded by water. Other works include a large Bizen Horn-shaped wall vase and Chinese Tang Dynasty - Yuan Dynasty ceramics.
- Kapoor Galleries is presenting a group of Indian and Himalayan art. One of the highlights is this outstanding large and richly gilded Vajrapani bronze. Dated to the 12th century, this sculpture is a rare early image of Vajrapani of majestic size and naturalistic detail of the highest quality. It is one of a group of three which are very closely matched in style, iconography and size. The other two are a Vajrasattva and a Maitreya held in the British Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art respectively. Other works include an illustration to the Bhagavata Purana: The Liberation of Nalakuvara and Manigriva, attributed to Manaku, and a 15th century Ngor Mandala.
- Kaikodo's exhibition "The Bountiful Tang" features a photographic portrait of a stunning ancient tree, a gingko planted in China during the 7th century in the early Tang dynasty (618-907), which explodes into breathtaking fall foliage yet today. Michael Cherney, whose work Kaikodo has carried for nearly a decade, felt this particular photo image to be an artistic breakthrough and Kaikodo saw the opportunity to exhibit works of art that were produced contemporaneously during this golden age of Chinese art and literature. Tang-dynasty ceramics, metalwork and sculpture, along with later paintings inspired by Tang styles and subject matter, join the portrait of the tree to celebrate this extraordinary time.
Four-panel folding screen
- Scholten Japanese Art's exhibition "KIYOCHIKA: On the Threshold of Modern Times" features a selection of woodblock prints by the influential Meiji-period (1868-1912) self-taught artist, Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847-1915). Born Kobayashi Katsunosuke, Kiyochika was the ninth and last child of a samurai retainer with a hereditary position at a rice granary located on the eastern bank of the Sumida River in the city of Edo. His mother’s family were also of samurai rank and operated a similar granary on the opposite side of the river. While the financial stipends for both families were likely modest, as members of the samurai class they would have enjoyed social status and surely pride in their heritage. In January of 1868, at the age of nineteen, Kiyochika fought for the last shogun in his doomed battle against the Choshu clan in Osaka. He followed the defeated shogun to Shizuoka and managed to support himself as a performer in traveling fencing shows for a few years. Eventually, Kiyochika returned to Edo (by then, renamed Tokyo) in 1874 and began pursuing an artistic career.
- Joan B Mirviss LTD is featuring the work of Koike Shōko in September and October with "Shifting Rhythms: The Sculpted Moments of Koike Shōko," the gifted artist’s third solo exhibition at the gallery. Koike has always taken inspiration from the hues of blue created by the sky reflecting off the sea. Early in her career, she began to add glass flakes to her glazes creating a blue “pool” through which she incised shell-like forms. She next gave those “shells” dimensionality by sculpting them in clay. These shell-like shapes, coupled with the puddled blue glaze in shades ranging from Persian blue, to turquoise, to the most recent cerulean, serve as the conceptual foundation for her clay works.
AUCTIONS...
- Christie’s Asian Art Week will feature an exciting series of sales at our Rockefeller Plaza galleries. The week of auctions will include a single-lot sale of a bronze ritual food vessel from the early Western Zhou dynasty, the fourth edition of the Linyushanren Collection and jades from private American collections. From an exquisite pair of Tang-dynasty Buddhist figures to Chinese paintings, South Asian modern and contemporary art, Himalayan sculptures, and more, treasures from every category of Asian art wait to be discovered.
- Sotheby's will present The Tang Hung and Fung Bi-Che Collection of Chinese Paintings & Calligraphy. Tang Hung (1926–2018), courtesy name Chunzhi, was born into a family of painters in Beijing. Tang Hung studied calligraphy in the slender-gold script and paintings of flowers and birds in the Song court style under Yu Fei’an and he also once studied under Zhang Daqian. After moving to Hong Kong in the early 1960s, Tang Hung held numerous solo, faculty and students exhibitions, and founded the San Chuan Art Society. Fung Bi-Che (1916-2009), whose original name was Di, was born in Shunde, Guangdong. She also studied with Zhang Daqian after moving to Hong Kong in 1946 and her works were presented in multiple solo exhibitions in Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, and Malaysia during the 50s and 60s. The two artists later immigrated to California in the United States in the 90s and continued to paint incessantly. This collection is assembled by a couple who shared a common appreciation and philosophy coming from the same lineage in Chinese paintings.
Stay Tuned on Kooness magazine for more exciting news from the artworld.