Suspended Marks 

Saint Louis University Museum of Art

Artists: Yueying Zhong and Lampo Leong
Date: February 11, 2003 through April 6, 2003 
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 15, 2003, 6pm-8pm

	Suspended Marks is an exhibition about the use of these marks, born out of a tradition that has culminated in the contemporary setting.  Yueying Zhong and Lamp Leong began their training and artistic careers in China.  Both artists left China and currently have studios in Columbia, Missouri.  Both artists have developed their styles from this tradition of mark making and have incorporated the Western influence of their location.  Both have been given the challenge to suspend marks within the gallery setting at the Saint Louis University Museum of Art.  They will develop scrolls that will be suspended in the middle of the main revolving exhibition gallery.  The viewer will have the opportunity to see marks that are floating in space.  Thus, the suspended marks will be the object and subject of Suspended Marks.

	There is a certain amount of belief in the viewer that a mark can create images that the viewer believes to be true; true in representation of an object, feeling, or theory of ideas.  The viewer suspends a belief when he enters the museum or gallery space to look at artwork.  It is within that physical act of creating that suspends time and location for some artist.  The artist is able to transcend and communicate an emotion, perception or image that the viewer reacts to and puts his own personal belief(s) in the work.  

	Suspended Marks challenges both the artist and viewer to suspend belief and to take a physical look at the work of Yueying Zhong and Lampo Leong.  The site-specific work allows the guest to view work painted on translucent silk that has been suspended from the ceiling in the gallery.  The viewer is allowed to walk around the pieces forcing the eye to see the surface and mark simultaneously.  The viewer should become aware of how the eye shifts from a surface to depth of space and how the viewer directs his eye to see the suspended mark within the context of a greater whole that is Toa.

Artists' Biographical Information

Yueying Zhong

	Yueying Zhong is a former associate professor of Fine Arts in the Luxun Academy of Fine Arts, China.  Zhong is an artist, critic, writer, and teacher with many achievements. He has published more than 50 academic papers in various art periodicals in China and in Taiwan.  He is the author of three books:  Chronicles of Major Events in Chinese, Western Art History and Charm and Style.  An accomplished expert, he was editor for the following prestigious art magazines:  Fine Art, Garden of Fine Art, Contemporary Academic Art, and Grand View of Fine Art in China.  He left China in 1995 to begin his career as a professional artist in the United States.  His studio is located in Columbia, Missouri.

Lampo Leong

	Lampo Leong was born in 1961 in Guangzhou, China.  He was trained in the classical Chinese disciplines of calligraphy and painting at the Guangzhou Fine Arts Institute.  He developed expertise in two distinct painting styles: the colorful, in-the-moment spontaneity of literati brushwork and the precise, controlled meticulous painting cultivated in the imperial academy.  Upon graduation from the institute, he moved to San Francisco, earning a Master of Fine Arts degree from the California College of Arts and Crafts in1988.

	Leong's work has been collected and displayed internationally, from China and Japan to the United States and Europe.  Leong's design was selected by the San Francisco Arts Commission for installation in a new plaza in San Francisco, California.  In 1998, Leong won the gold medal at the 15th Exhibition of Chinese Calligraphy hosted by the Museum of Fine Arts in Macao.  He currently teaches fine art at the University of Missouri, Columbia.

	Lampo Leong says of his art form, "I integrate Chinese calligraphy as abstract patterns in my paintings by cutting calligraphic images done on rice-paper and collaging them onto canvas.  The abstract arrangement of these fragmented icons in a free-floating cosmic composition evokes the sense and energy of Asian culture and synthesizes the experience and vision of a modern artist.  These qualities are enhanced by glimmers of glowing illumination from gold metallic washes along with gestures of vitality and rhythmic strokes of wild cursive Chinese calligraphy, which resonate with an archaic spirit of the earth."