COLLECTION HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:

Wei Ligang
Born in Datong, Shanxi, in 1964, Wei Ligang has been at the forefront of contemporary ink painting’s development from its beginning, and he was one of the organizers of the June 1999 “Bashu Parade” exhibition. Wei studied mathematics at the Nankai University in Tianjin and he became the president of the calligraphy society at the university. After graduating in 1985, Wei was assigned to teach mathematics at the Teachers’ Training School in the industrial city of Taiyuan, but he succeeded in persuading the school to allow him to teach calligraphy in 1988. Wei Ligang moved to Beijing in 1995 to concentrate on his art. His training in mathematics has contributed to his abstract form of calligraphy. Wei Ligang constantly deconstructs and re-forms the characters in his paintings while hinting at traditional script-forms (such as formal, running, or “grass” script), thus declaring his deep roots in Chinese culture. His works were included in the pioneering exhibition organized by Gordon Barrass at the British Museum in 2002.

Li Chevalier
Born Beijing 1961. Aged 15, Li Chevalier, a gifted vocalist, joined the Opera Ensemble of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army for five years. She later joined an intellectual movement centred on humanist ideas that were notorious in China at the time, but were dissolved due to the Anti Spiritual Pollution Campaign. Chevalier then left for Paris in 1984 to study Philosophy at the Sorbonne for which she received a postgraduate degree in 1990 after doing her undergraduate studies at Sciences Politiques. She subsequently studied art in various European capitals including Paris and Florence, receiving her last diploma from the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London after which she was selected for the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2007. Chevalier continues to exploit her musical background in major installations, most recently in Siena at the Santa Maria della Scala. Her work is notable not only for its technical virtuosity and its aesthetic innovations but for the philosophical hinterland on which it rests.