Alisan Fine Arts is proud to announce the opening of Walasse Ting: Joy, Temptation and Magic, a survey exhibition of the artist’s evolution over five decades. While widely recognised for his exuberant and colourful paintings of Dionysiac nudes, luscious flowers and menagerie of animals, Walasse Ting (1928-2010) was a groundbreaking figure who bridged diverse Western movements - including CoBrA, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop art - with 1 Chinese artistic traditions. This exhibition features representative works from each decade, spanning the 1950s to the 1990s, in mediums such as drawing, acrylic on canvas, and ink on paper, paying homage to his liberal meandering across Western and Eastern artistic influences, and unadulterated celebration of life’s abundance and temptations.

This comprehensive exhibition offers a vital exploration of the artist’s legacy, revealing facets of his oeuvre that have often been overshadowed by his well-recognised vibrant paintings of nudes and flowers. By showcasing early and lesser-known works—particularly in gestural abstraction and black-and-white painting—the exhibition reveals the depth and complexity of Ting’s creative spirit throughout his illustrious career. Ting’s long-standing relationship with Alisan Fine Arts dates back to his first solo exhibition in Hong Kong in 1986, organised by Alice King, the gallery’s co-founder, just five years into AFA’s operation. Since then, the gallery has mounted 12 solo exhibitions for the artist and has been instrumental in introducing Ting’s signature style to Asian audiences, helping to establish him as a significant figure in the Chinese art diaspora.

Ting’s unorthodox approach to life and art, along with his resistance to conventional theorizing of his artistic career, have emerged as the very qualities that make his art groundbreaking. John Canaday, “Mr. Ting has an ebullience about him that can seduce you into forgiving any excess, and he is a one-man proof that spirited triviality is a virtue in opposition to inflated efforts to be serious.” (“Nivola and Ting Have Gallery Exhibition,” The New York Times, December 31, 1966, 35). 

Ting's first solo museum exhibition in the United States, Walasse Ting: Parrot Jungle, took place at the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale in 2023. In 2016, the Musée Cernuschi in Paris also held the first large-scale retrospective exhibition of Ting's work in France. His works have been collected by major museums around the world including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Chicago Institute of Art; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Tate Gallery, London; Musée Cernuschi, Paris; Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai; Taipei Fine Art Museum, Taiwan; Hong Kong Museum of Art; M+, Hong Kong.