ZenKiln · First Curated Exhibition
存在の愛
The Love of Existence
An Exhibition of Contemporary Ink by Yang Ping
For our first curated exhibition, ZenKiln is honoured to present The Love of Existence (存在の愛) — a Tokyo solo exhibition of new ink paintings by Yang Ping, held at Gallery Sugino and curated by the critic Lu Hong with Sugino.
Yang Ping works in contemporary ink. A graduate of the School of Chinese Painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, she divides her life and studio between Tokyo and Beijing — and it is in that crossing, between two ink traditions and two cities, that her painting lives. The exhibition centres on her Quiet Moments series: paintings that try to hold the fleeting passage of feeling, and to give form to something as abstract as time itself.
- Dates
- 2026 (exact dates to be announced)
- Venue
- Gallery Sugino (ギャラリー杉野), Tokyo
- Curators
- Lu Hong (魯虹) · Sugino (杉野)
The Quiet Moments series captures the fleeting passages of emotion and feeling, attempting to give form to time as an abstract idea. It continues my earlier Concretionary Time series.
What is time? Why does it sometimes feel long, and sometimes pass in a flash? In Being and Time, the existentialist philosopher Heidegger holds that time is not linear but the concrete process of individual existence — the sum of our anticipations of the future, our memories of the past, and our experience of the present. That idea is exactly what this series sets out to express.
— Yang Ping
Ink, for Yang Ping, is less a medium than a way of attending. Across the Quiet Moments paintings a single face surfaces from washes of rose, violet, and jade — eyes lowered, neither portrait nor quite dream. Living in Tokyo has drawn her practice toward stillness and ma, the charged interval of empty space, while keeping the structural confidence of her academy training. The result is ink made to be lived with: quiet, unhurried, at home on a wall.
Works
About the Artist
Yang Ping (楊平) is a contemporary independent artist working between Tokyo and Beijing. She holds an MFA from the School of Chinese Painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing. She is a member of the China Artists Association and the China Calligraphers Association, a researcher at the Hong Kong Academy of Painting, and a member of the Japan Chinese Artists Association. She is the founder of Young Ping Space, executive director of Gallery Hiro+, and a standing director of the Japan Chinese Women's Calligraphy Association.
Her solo exhibitions include Like Clouds (He Art Museum, Wuhan, 2023), Flowers · Gaze (798 Yue Art Museum, Beijing, 2022), Like Flowers (Song Art Museum, Beijing, 2021), and Wabi · Purple (798 Yue Art Museum, Beijing, 2019). Her work has been written into Lu Hong's history of contemporary Chinese art and held in collections in China, Japan, and Australia.
Curator's Note
This exhibition is curated by Lu Hong — one of the critics who has followed Yang Ping's work most closely and written it into his history of contemporary Chinese art — together with Sugino of Gallery Sugino.
The Love of Existence opens at Gallery Sugino in Tokyo in 2026. Reception details will be announced here.