Ho Kan integrates Eastern calligraphy and the art of seal carving with a minimalist yet poetic visual language to develop his distinctive, Eastern lyrical abstraction. He starts with elemental points, and, from them, he creates his own philosophy about the arrangement of the image, validating the existence of each element.
Ho Kan’s cultural references were not limited to calligraphy, as he was also inspired by Eastern spirituality. Hence, the decision to simplify forms and use a minimum of colours in his works echo Zen Buddhism and Taoism, which both advocate simplicity via a minimal use of colors and forms.
Text Sabine Vazieux / Curator of Beyond Colors and Shapes
In the 1930s, many Chinese artists considered that Europe was the nerve centre of Modern Art, and travelled to Paris to pursue their artistic studies. In 1929, the Chinese artist Liu Hai-Su (1896–1994), after returning from a trip to Europe, wrote ‘art is universal in nature and has no borders. If today we desire to study Western art, it is not because it originates in the West, but rather because it has characteristics shared all around the world. (…) It would be unthinkable to reject a combination of influences’. Around twenty years later, the desire to embrace the West, exacerbated by the new post-war world order, provided a unique vision of the world in which the young artist Ho Kan adopted his approach.
Ho Kan’s artistic career is filled with historical events that plunge the visitors inexorably into the history of China. At the end of the 1940s, in a context of political upheaval, Ho Kan, like more than a million Chinese, left the continent to live in Taiwan. In 1950, he enrolled in the Department of Art of Taipei University of Education. He found the teaching was too academic, so he only stayed there for a year and then joined the studio of the famous artist Li Chun-Shan (1912–1984). The master was a great connoisseur of Western modern art and he had a decisive influence on his young students, who were looking for new forms of artistic expression. Although Li Chun-Shan interacted with his pupils, he never gave them an example to follow, and on the contrary preferred to stimulate and develop each student’s individuality, an approach that helped Ho Kan to develop an individual style. This formative period enabled the young artist to break away from tradition, enriching his artistic vocabulary through the discovery of new movements that originated in the West; Ho Kan learned, in particular, the technique of oil painting, which was still unknown in Asia. Fauvism, s、Surrealism, and Impressionism all enriched his artistic perception, encouraging him to explore new colours, themes, and forms.
He had great admiration for the work of Gauguin, Cézanne, and Modigliani, seeing in the latter’s sculptures of iris less women with their contemplative expressions a spirituality that resembled that of the great statues of Buddha. He then adopted a surrealistic style, combining various spaces and subjects within the same painting. At that time, the shapes he drew in a highly structural fashion foreshadowed his future aesthetic quests.
In 1964, his growing attraction to Europe led him to embark for France on board the oil tanker ‘Vietnam’. He eventually decided to settle in Milan, where he lived for fifty years. As soon as he arrived in Europe he visited museums and met artists. Inspired by these aesthetic discoveries, he soon abandoned the surrealist style, as he realised he could never be better than the movement’s major artists and he gradually moved towards geometric abstraction, while conserving and mixing Asian cultural references.
Far from China and probably nostalgic for his homeland, he felt the necessity to express his deep cultural roots and saw Western and Eastern art not in terms of duality but rather as a fusion of cultures. This approach was widely shared by Western artists who were also influenced by Eastern art and philosophies.
During his Milanese period, Ho Kan used dark blues and greens, reflecting the melancholy he felt as a result of his recent exile. In his works he painted small lines, which evoked disconnected Chinese characters placed weightlessly—as though scattered by the wind—in the pictorial space. This fresh, abstract, and poetic approach to the representation of signs paved the way for an infinite imaginative repertoire. (Fig. 1)
Little by little, Ho Kan used a broader and more exuberant palette of colours, and his compositions became simpler and the pigments more diluted. (Fig. 2) At first sight, the most structured works resemble Western abstract geometrical art, while in his more expressive works calligraphy can be clearly discerned.
However, in his more geometric works, which feature circles, squares, and triangles, the spaces around the forms are significant, and owe much to Chinese calligraphy, in which the calligrapher leaves ‘breathing space’ around the characters. In his most refined works—where Western geometric abstraction sought to attain the perfection of execution—Ho Kan would leave a trace made by the paintbrush or experiment with deliberate imperfections, which were all inspired by calligraphy and Eastern philosophy.
Ho Kan’s cultural references were not limited to calligraphy, as he was also inspired by Eastern spirituality. Hence, the decision to simplify forms and use a minimum of colours in his works echo Zen Buddhism and Taoism, which both advocate simplicity via a minimal use of colors and forms.
Ho Kan likes to experiment with forms, which he arranges according to his inspiration, while never repeating the same constructions. This creative freedom sometimes produces compositions in which visual elements can be interpreted, like the Chinese characters that evoke figurative forms. Although it is possible to discern figures, they are quite incidental. They happen to be coincidences that might correspond with the Taoist philosophy of Wei Wuwei, which means ‘accomplishing without doing’.
To gain a better understanding of the Asian artists’ concept of abstract geometric painting, it is interesting to draw a parallel between Ho Kan’s approach with the work of the Japanese Buddhist monk Sengai Gibon (1750–1837), who adopted a similar approach at the start of the nineteenth century. He painted a wash representing a circle, a triangle, and a square (Fig. 3), in which each of the forms symbolised a concept in relation to the universe. In the light of the place occupied by Asian philosophy in Ho Kan’s art, there is a great temptation to interpret symbols that are closely linked to philosophical concepts in the abstract forms. Hence, at first sight, his art seems to have borrowed the principle of geometric abstraction that was popular in Europe in the 1940s and ‘50s, but Ho Kan primarily adopted this pictorial style because it enabled him to express his profound cultural roots.
Throughout his artistic career, he has developed an abstract geometric style but has never succumbed to a pure geometric style; underlying his lines are the calligraphic vivacity and energy inspired by his cultural heritage. Viewer should take time to look at a work by Ho Kan and be transported by his world and the energy it transmits, without attempting to find interpretations or a systematic dichotomy that defines what belongs to the East and what belongs to the West.
His oeuvre perfectly reflects the quote from Liu Hai-Su: ”because it goes beyond borders and conveys a universal humanity that is in touch with our inner sensitivity.”
An Art Without Borders
In the 1930s, many Chinese artists considered that Europe was the nerve centre of Modern Art, and travelled to Paris to pursue their artistic studies. In 1929, the Chinese artist Liu Hai-Su (1896–1994), after returning from a trip to Europe, wrote ‘art is universal in nature and has no borders. If today we desire to study Western art, it is not because it originates in the West, but rather because it has characteristics shared all around the world. (…) It would be unthinkable to reject a combination of influences’. Around twenty years later, the desire to embrace the West, exacerbated by the new post-war world order, provided a unique vision of the world in which the young artist Ho Kan adopted his approach.
Ho Kan’s artistic career is filled with historical events that plunge the visitors inexorably into the history of China. At the end of the 1940s, in a context of political upheaval, Ho Kan, like more than a million Chinese, left the continent to live in Taiwan. In 1950, he enrolled in the Department of Art of Taipei University of Education. He found the teaching was too academic, so he only stayed there for a year and then joined the studio of the famous artist Li Chun-Shan (1912–1984). The master was a great connoisseur of Western modern art and he had a decisive influence on his young students, who were looking for new forms of artistic expression. Although Li Chun-Shan interacted with his pupils, he never gave them an example to follow, and on the contrary preferred to stimulate and develop each student’s individuality, an approach that helped Ho Kan to develop an individual style. This formative period enabled the young artist to break away from tradition, enriching his artistic vocabulary through the discovery of new movements that originated in the West; Ho Kan learned, in particular, the technique of oil painting, which was still unknown in Asia. Fauvism, s、Surrealism, and Impressionism all enriched his artistic perception, encouraging him to explore new colours, themes, and forms.
He had great admiration for the work of Gauguin, Cézanne, and Modigliani, seeing in the latter’s sculptures of iris less women with their contemplative expressions a spirituality that resembled that of the great statues of Buddha. He then adopted a surrealistic style, combining various spaces and subjects within the same painting. At that time, the shapes he drew in a highly structural fashion foreshadowed his future aesthetic quests.
In 1964, his growing attraction to Europe led him to embark for France on board the oil tanker ‘Vietnam’. He eventually decided to settle in Milan, where he lived for fifty years. As soon as he arrived in Europe he visited museums and met artists. Inspired by these aesthetic discoveries, he soon abandoned the surrealist style, as he realised he could never be better than the movement’s major artists and he gradually moved towards geometric abstraction, while conserving and mixing Asian cultural references.
Far from China and probably nostalgic for his homeland, he felt the necessity to express his deep cultural roots and saw Western and Eastern art not in terms of duality but rather as a fusion of cultures. This approach was widely shared by Western artists who were also influenced by Eastern art and philosophies.
During his Milanese period, Ho Kan used dark blues and greens, reflecting the melancholy he felt as a result of his recent exile. In his works he painted small lines, which evoked disconnected Chinese characters placed weightlessly—as though scattered by the wind—in the pictorial space. This fresh, abstract, and poetic approach to the representation of signs paved the way for an infinite imaginative repertoire. (Fig. 1)
Little by little, Ho Kan used a broader and more exuberant palette of colours, and his compositions became simpler and the pigments more diluted. (Fig. 2) At first sight, the most structured works resemble Western abstract geometrical art, while in his more expressive works calligraphy can be clearly discerned.
However, in his more geometric works, which feature circles, squares, and triangles, the spaces around the forms are significant, and owe much to Chinese calligraphy, in which the calligrapher leaves ‘breathing space’ around the characters. In his most refined works—where Western geometric abstraction sought to attain the perfection of execution—Ho Kan would leave a trace made by the paintbrush or experiment with deliberate imperfections, which were all inspired by calligraphy and Eastern philosophy.
Ho Kan’s cultural references were not limited to calligraphy, as he was also inspired by Eastern spirituality. Hence, the decision to simplify forms and use a minimum of colours in his works echo Zen Buddhism and Taoism, which both advocate simplicity via a minimal use of colors and forms.
Ho Kan likes to experiment with forms, which he arranges according to his inspiration, while never repeating the same constructions. This creative freedom sometimes produces compositions in which visual elements can be interpreted, like the Chinese characters that evoke figurative forms. Although it is possible to discern figures, they are quite incidental. They happen to be coincidences that might correspond with the Taoist philosophy of Wei Wuwei, which means ‘accomplishing without doing’.
To gain a better understanding of the Asian artists’ concept of abstract geometric painting, it is interesting to draw a parallel between Ho Kan’s approach with the work of the Japanese Buddhist monk Sengai Gibon (1750–1837), who adopted a similar approach at the start of the nineteenth century. He painted a wash representing a circle, a triangle, and a square (Fig. 3), in which each of the forms symbolised a concept in relation to the universe. In the light of the place occupied by Asian philosophy in Ho Kan’s art, there is a great temptation to interpret symbols that are closely linked to philosophical concepts in the abstract forms. Hence, at first sight, his art seems to have borrowed the principle of geometric abstraction that was popular in Europe in the 1940s and ‘50s, but Ho Kan primarily adopted this pictorial style because it enabled him to express his profound cultural roots.
Throughout his artistic career, he has developed an abstract geometric style but has never succumbed to a pure geometric style; underlying his lines are the calligraphic vivacity and energy inspired by his cultural heritage. Viewer should take time to look at a work by Ho Kan and be transported by his world and the energy it transmits, without attempting to find interpretations or a systematic dichotomy that defines what belongs to the East and what belongs to the West.
His oeuvre perfectly reflects the quote from Liu Hai-Su: ”because it goes beyond borders and conveys a universal humanity that is in touch with our inner sensitivity.”