Calligraphy 書法

Calligraphy after writing. Handwriting is receding in a screen-led age; each sheet carries one character, and each stroke confirms that a hand was here.

All five series

和, the character of No. 07, keyed from the cobalt sheet as an ink mark

Ground: after Hasegawa Tōhaku, Pine Trees, Tokyo National Museum.

侘寂

Series II · Nos. 06 – 09

Four sheets, one character each.

Four sheets of ink on rice paper, each 70 × 60 cm, on a cobalt ground. One character to a sheet, in cursive and in seal script.

Untitled (single character), 2022. Ink on rice paper: a black ink mass with crystalline mottling on a cobalt ground — Series II · Calligraphy 書法 No. 06 Untitled (single character), 2022 Ink on rice paper 70 × 60 cm Private collection

和 Peace, 2022. Ink on rice paper: a single cursive character in black splashed ink on a cobalt ground — Series II · Calligraphy 書法勤 · qín · Diligence Ink on paper Private collection

無 Nihil, 2022. Ink on rice paper: a seal-script character in black mottled ink on a cobalt ground — Series II · Calligraphy 書法 No. 08 無 · wú · Nihil, 2022 Ink on rice paper 70 × 60 cm Private collection

勤 Diligent, 2022. Ink on rice paper: the character 勤 in textured black ink on a cobalt ground — Series II · Calligraphy 書法 No. 09 勤 · qín · Diligent, 2022 Ink on rice paper 70 × 60 cm Private collection

The blue-ground calligraphies hung in a grey gallery room — Series II · Calligraphy 書法 No. 07 和 · hé · Peace, 2022 Ink on rice paper 70 × 60 cm Private collection

Three blue-ground calligraphies above a curved velvet sofa in a concrete room — Three blue-ground calligraphies, installed. Photograph courtesy of the artist.

論

Statement

A script of her own.

Calligraphy was her first training and is still her most direct address to the present. The series starts from a plain observation. Writing by hand is no longer a daily necessity, and the inward attention it asked for is going with it. Each sheet carries one character, the portrait of a single idea. The poems she writes out in classical brushwork are her own, in the plain speech of her generation, so that the script and the words come from different centuries.

Monologue sets snowflakes on imperial-yellow paper, the colour of power beneath an ornament that melts. 得失一時, a maxim in silver leaf on a silk fan, goes back into the hand that holds it. None of it copies a model book. In her words, calligraphy is both a text and a picture.

The training under it is orthodox. She read calligraphy and painting at the National Taiwan University of Arts, in the one department in Taiwan given over to calligraphy, ink painting, seal carving and mounting, and took first prize for calligraphy at the Taiwan Arts and Culture Award. Model books, stele rubbings and seal studies came first; a script of her own came after.

Calligraphy works on film · 0:48

A six-panel gold-leaf screen brushed with sweeping black ink strokes — Six-panel screen, ink on gold leaf. Photograph courtesy of the artist.

Two of the blue-ground calligraphies in a concrete gallery, lit from the window — Ku Chi-Chun in the Taipei studio. Photograph courtesy of the artist.

箔

Fans and leaf

Silver and gold leaf on silk.

No. 10Monologue 內心獨白, 2013 Ink on imperial-yellow paper
No. 11得失一時 Silver leaf on silk fan · 24 × 32 cm

典藏

Collected by

Public collections.

2014Taiwan Ministry of Culture Art Bank Tibetan Ink and Hug, two calligraphy works
2018Taipei Representative Office in Singapore

Hand-lettered logotypes for Gucci, Kiton, Stefano Ricci and Fabiana Filippi are shown under Collaborations.

作品全覽

The series in full

Every work, and where it hangs.

IMineral Painting膠彩2013 – present
IICalligraphy書法2013 – present
IIIHeroine女英雄2015
IVBuddhist Calligraphy經書2014 – present
VCommissions委託創作2013 – present

Calligraphy is commissioned singly and as series for brands and interiors.

Every sheet in this series is in a private or public collection. New calligraphy is written to commission, a character or a line of verse for a room, a name for a brand. The ink panels in a Taipei hotel lobby and the logotypes brushed for four Italian houses began the same way.

Enquire about a commission Guided viewings at the annual art fairs, by booking.