Detail: Since 2009 the artists Arnold Chang (张洪 b. 1954) and Michael Cherney (秋麦 b. 1969) have created a series of collaborative works that combine classical ink painting with photography in ways that subtly blur the distinction between the two media. The photographs of Cherney, an American residing in Beijing, and the ink landscapes of Chang, a Chinese American living in New Jersey, are both rooted in the centuries-old tradition of Chinese painting. The collaborative works begin with Cherney’s meticulously selected excerpts of photographs taken in China and printed on xuan paper, and combine them with Chang’s elegant brushwork, resulting in a dialogue between the two media, as well as a conversation between the two artists. These works challenge the definition of shuimo 水墨 (“ink painting”) while simultaneously embracing and reaffirming the classical aesthetics of Chinese landscape art.

Although a number of major institutions, including the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Kalamazoo Institute of Art, the Crow Museum, and the Hong Kong Museum of Art, have mounted special exhibitions of Chang and Cherney’s collaborations, and their works have been included in exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Sotheby’s, this is the first New York exhibition devoted entirely to their work. More than 20 recent works, none of which have been exhibited or published before, will be on view.