On the occasion of the M+ museum exhibition, “Madame Song: Pioneering Art and Fashion in China”, Madame Song-Huai-Kuei’s son Phénix Varbanov is exhibiting a selection of recent contemporary ink paintings at Pékin Fine Arts.

In a career spanning 20 years, Phénix paints today without constraints, freely expressing influences from his triple cultural identity: Chinese, Bulgarian and French. Experimenting with Chinese ink and paper and Western color sensibility, Phénix’s focus is abstract ink aesthetics. He is determined to take ink in new directions. He pushes, blows, and strokes the ink, imprinting its movement across Chinese “rice paper”. The resulting compositions conjure nature’s surfaces, landscapes, mountain faces, crevices, and rock formations.

Trained in Paris, Beijing and Hangzhou, in ink-painting and calligraphy, Phénix works from his studio in Paris with frequent long-stays in his parent’s birth places of Sofia and Beijing. Today, his maturity and dexterity in moving ink across paper evokes the work of Pierre Soulages and the influence of Chinese calligraphic abstraction.

Varbanov’s dedication to innovating with abstract ink painting, marks the passage of time spent across three cultures. Ultimately, his abstract ink paintings are no less than landscapes of the mind, recording a life of experimental ink painting pursuits. Ink leaves its traces on paper, just as nature marks time on stones, earth, and cliff-sides. Phénix tracks his practice over time, using the language of abstract ink, mainly black, with occasional shadows of bold Western color.

Gallery address: 16/F Union Industrial Building, 48 Wong Chuk Hang Road, Aberdeen