Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery proudly announces the major solo exhibition of Bai Ming presented by The National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rome. Spanning thirty years of the artist’s career, At the Crossroads of Worlds examines Bai Ming's contemporary vision in a space between innovation and tradition, self-expression and craftsmanship, art and daily life, highlighting the artist's experimental spirit grounded in a profound understanding and respect for his heritage

Born in 1965, Bai Ming is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist whose media ranges from ceramics to ink and lacquer paintings. His works are collected by important international museums, including the British Museum, Musée Cernuschi and Musée de Salagon, in France, and National Art Museum of China etc. He has also held numerous leadership roles in the development of Chinese contemporary art, including Director, Professor and Doctoral Supervisor of the Department of Ceramic Art in the Academy of Arts & Design, and Executive Vice Director of the Art Museum in the Academy of Arts & Design, both at Tsinghua University, Beijing.

Harmonizing his masterful know-how and freedom of expression, Bai Ming’s artistic journey across techniques and materials clearly shows his will to question the notions of tradition and modernity, while affirming art as the great stimulant of life. This comprehensive exhibition attempts to reveal all aspects of this multifaceted artist, bringing together more than 80 works of ceramics, installations, ink and lacquer paintings with mixed media. It examines Bai Ming’s idiosyncratic approach to a diverse range of materials that have their roots in the long history of Chinese culture yet become channels of new expressions through his unparalleled techniques. Through the interplay of scale, perspective, light and space, tradition and modernity inform each other to create new meanings in his works, foregrounding the inventive possibilities of our cultural heritage.

As a counterpoint to ceramics in the form of vases, plates or cups, often inspired by Chinese culture and models, the exhibition features pieces whose functionless forms are more closely akin to sculptures, with fine attention paid to fullness and emptiness, positive and negative space. With a deep interest in exploring time and space in his work, Bai Ming utilizes his painting skill and his thorough knowledge of the materials to harmonize the form of the objects in physical space and the images in the pictorial space. Rock Painting of Landscape (2016) is a large-scale arrow quiver fired with underglaze red. Rather than a monotonous tone, the underglaze red demonstrates rich and even unpredictable variations. On the towering porcelain, the abstract imagery depicted with delicate engraved lines brings to mind ancient rock totems. The Earth (2018-2019) is a vase with bowl-shaped mouth on which Bai Ming, depicts the vastness of the earth through semi-abstract structural composition decorated with pure 24K gold. With a subtle brownish-green hue and glittery gold, it evokes a romantic atmosphere akin to gazing upon the earth from the sky in an alternate space and time.

Bai Ming’s reinvention of the age-old art form is also reflected in the installation works that play on space and quantity. Appliance: Form and Process (2004) explores the relationship between an object and its function. Using the same mold, Bai Ming employed various moisture levels, lines, colors and impressions to examine the commonalities and subtle differences of objects, and to explore the process and results of man’s interventions. On the walls of the exhibition feature ink and lacquer paintings with mixed media such as tea and incense, materials that have their roots in the long history of Chinese heritage. The series of ink works titled The New Classic of Mountains and Seas (2020-2022) adopts the aerial perspective of the landscape, blending the imagination of the ancient text The Classic of Mountains and Seas and our observations of today’s world. A Suspended Dimension (2018) is a lacquer work, a material that has fascinated the artist since childhood for its sense of eternity and the indelible traces left on it. To the artist, the solidified space in lacquer painting is like a suspended dimension where we examine time, history and phenomena in fragments and the calligraphic patterns reflect his painting process, the traces of time.

In the words of the curator, Jean-Louis Andral, Director of the Picasso Museum in Antibes, “Bai Ming is a contemporary artist who creates timeless works, rooted in an immemorial artistic history that he reinterprets with the sensitivity of a man of his time, and the technique and inventiveness of an outstanding multi-media master.” This exhibition is supported by Kwai Fung Foundation Limited, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting outstanding Chinese modern and contemporary artists while fostering art and cultural development to inspire new thinking about our heritage and contribute to cultural continuity.

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