Ink dreams at the LACMA
Wucius Wong - Deep in the Mountains 2 - 2005
From September 19 to December 12, 2021, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents "Ink Dreams: selections from the INK Foundation," featuring a selection of East Asian ink paintings.
Source: Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Image: Wucius Wong, "Deep in the Mountains #2," 2005, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, promised gift from the INK Foundation, © Wucius Wong, photo by Maurice Aeschimann, Geneva.
In 2018, LACMA announced the promised gift of 400 works created with ink from the INK Foundation, and has since been exhibiting some of the most prominent works from the collection, but "Ink Dreams" marks the first time that a substantial group of these works will be exhibited together.
The exhibition includes 78 works by 53 different artists, mostly from East Asia but with representation from Europe and the United States. Artists on view include Chen Haiyan, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Xu Bing, among others. Susanna Ferrell, curator of the exhibition, notes that "Ink Dreams" presents the genre of contemporary ink painting as one that exhibits “soft qualities and common themes as opposed to one defined solely by the materials of ink and paper.”
The exhibition is organized into three thematic sections. The first, "Apparitions," presents works in which negative space or even absence itself is used as a compositional element. In the second section, "Meditations," Lui Shou-kwan's "Zen Painting" (1969) exemplifies how thick, rapid brushstrokes were employed to manifest enlightenment gained through meditation. The final section, "Dreamscapes," includes contemporary interpretations of the imaginary landscape, a recurring theme in the history of East Asian ink painting, in which the artist depicts his or her own inner landscape, as opposed to a natural landscape.

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