FONG Chung-Ray
b.1934 Artist CV
Fong Chung-Ray was born in 1934 in Nanyang, China. He arrived in Taiwan in 1949 as a soldier. In 1954, he graduated from Political Staff College with a major in Fine Arts. He currently lives and works in San Francisco. In 1958, he co-founded Four Seas Art Association with the artist Hu Chichung and in 1961 he joined the Fifth Moon Group and redirected himself from oil painting to the venture of ink painting. In the early 70s, he won a fellowship awarded by the Rockefeller III Foundation, enabling him to visit the contemporary art events in Europe and the United States. In 1975, he immigrated to the United States and settled down in the Bay area of San Francisco. Fong’s painting style, during the 1960s, was similar to the abstractionism in postwar America, and was typical of the modern style in the 60s with his simplistic but vivid and powerful composition. During that period, he switched to oil brush, xuan paper and ink, returning to the traditional way of creation. He also invented a brush made out of fibers taken from the trunks of palm trees, which gave a rawer aspect to his tints of colors. After moving to the United States, his style moved into another phase; the characteristics of this period were influenced by calligraphy strokes and the study of Buddhism. He combined written characters and abstract composition, transforming Chinese characters into art. After 1989 he again opened up a new creative field: collage, in which he created texture by adding layers of colors. Fong Chung-Ray has always been strict to his own creation, loyal to his self-perception, and this way he conveys deep emotionality as well as rationality through art, carrying personal spiritual thinking and practice. His selected solo exhibitions include: The Eternal Abstract: Fong Chung Ray Solo Exhibition (Asia Art Center, Taipei, 2017), Solo Exhibition (National Museum of History, Taipei, 1974). His important group exhibitions include the Four Seas Art Exhibition in 1958-1961, the Fifth Moon Group Exhibition in 1961-1974, Biennale de Sao Paolo in Sao Paolo in 1959 and 1963, Trends in 20th Century Chinese Painting at Stanford University Museum in 1968, The Experimental Sixties: Avant-Garde Art in Taiwan at Taipei Fine Arts Museum in 2003, Modern Water-Ink Painting Biannual Exhibition at Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei at 2007, 1960-The Origin of Taiwan’s Modern Art at Asia Art Center, Taipei in 2016, FROM CHINA TO TAÏWAN. Pioneers of abstraction (1955-1985) at The Museum of Ixelles in 2017 and The Weight of Lightness: Ink Art at M+ at the West Kowloon Cultural District in 2017, the duo exhibition The Birth of Modernist Art Movement in Taiwan at National Museum of History (2024), The Longing for the Abstract:Chuang Che, Fong Chung-Ray, Yang Chihung Chuang Che, Fong Chung-Ray, Yang Chihung at Asia Art Center Taipei (2022), Revisiting the Origin of Taiwan’s Modern Art in the 1960s by Chu Weibor and Fong Chung Ray is held by Asia Art Center at Art Basel Hong Kong in 2018, Crouching Talents: The Abstract Art of Eastern Origin at Asia Art Center, Beijing in 2019 and Transgression throughout the Volatile World Inaugural Exhibition of Asia Art Center Taipei New Flagship Space at Asia Art Center Taipei in 2021. Fong’s public collection includes Pompidou Centre and Musée Cernuschi in Paris, France and San Francisco International Airport and Los Angeles County Museum of Art in USA.
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