Art Exhibit "Primordial Encounters: paintings of Lampo Leong"

	A Solo Exhibit featuring the works of MU Professor Lampo Leong opened April 25, 2002 at Legacy Art & BookWorks, 1010 East Broadway in downtown Columbia.  This show includes 16 powerful abstract paintings and a DVD movie by this award-winning and extremely talented artist whose work is widely collected throughout Asia and the United States.

	Leong, who has had work accepted for more than 16 national and international juries shows in the last year alone, is one of the premier young artists on the international scene today.  He was classically trained at the Guangzhou Fine Arts Institute, Guangdong, China, receiving his B.F.A. in
1983. In 1988 he received his M.F.A. with High Distinction, from the California College of Arts & Crafts in Oakland.  He has had more than 40 solo exhibits, and been selected to participate in more than 100 group shows worldwide.

	Leong's work is a synthesis of the traditional and the modern, a play of light and emotion, a dance between power and passion.  The viewer is drawn into the painting by the elemental force of Leong's abstract vision, but then finds subtle layers of calligraphic glyphs and classical landscapes to explore and celebrate.  It is little wonder that his work graces both public and private collections worldwide.
	
For additional information, contact James Downey at Legacy:  (573)
442-0855, or legacyart@legacyart.com. 

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DVD Film Description   (Professor Lampo Leong collaborated with Dr. Thomas Mckenney) Veni Sanctus Spirits: Spiritual Transformations

	This film explores the dynamic possibilities of DVD technology to create an enhanced experience of the painted images.  The layered imagery evolves, and the dramatically shifting planes modulate through a spectrum of hues ranging from the meditative to the molten.  Through incorporating the rhythm of calligraphy and abstract painting, this film aspires to evoke a transcendent experience of sublime spirituality, a glimpse, perhaps, into the crucible of genesis.  These images might at times remind viewer of elemental forces-seething magma, the formation of fossils, glaciating or solar flares.  At other times they might seem metaphoric of invisible dramas-cosmic or spiritual crises, powerful emotions recollected in moments of serenity.  Reflecting both a reverence for the spirit of Christ and an ever-renewed wonder at the universe revealed to us by modern science, this work celebrates the dynamic energies that give birth to new life, new planets, and new stars. 

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PROFESSOR LAMPO LEONG: BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY

	Lampo Leong is an internationally renowned painter, calligrapher and multimedia artist, who received his BFA from the prestigious Guangzhou Fine Arts Institute in China and MFA with High Distinction from the California College of Arts & Crafts.  He is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Missouri-Columbia.  He is also a frequent speaker at Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University.

	Professor Leong's work has been featured in more than thirty solo exhibitions and hundreds of group shows in museums and galleries all over the world.  He has also collaborated with dancers, musicians and composers such as Lily Cai, Chanticleer, Chen Yi and Thomas Mckenney for multi-media performances in San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and University of Missouri-Columbia.  His paintings are widely collected by museums and corporate collections internationally, including Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco International Airport, Macao Museum of Art in Macao, Guangzhou Museum of Art in China; as well as Walt Disney in Florida and The Tokyo Westin in Japan.

	Professor Leong's artistic contributions have earned him many awards, recognition and inclusions such as the Who's Who in American Art and Who's Who in the World by Marquis.  In 1999, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown proclaimed November 19 to be Lampo Leong Day, and recently, Leong's 26-foot-diameter granite inset medallion design won a San Francisco Arts Commission competition for permanent installation in a new city park.  His art and teaching achievements have been in hundreds of feature stories in newspapers, magazines, and television interviews internationally, including a PBS documentary and the US Congressional Record.