Artist Leah Ke Yi Zheng's exhibition "Change, I Ching (64 Paintings)" at the Renaissance Society in Chicago presents a series of oil and acrylic paintings on silk, each depicting one of the 64 hexagrams from the ancient Chinese divination text, the I Ching. The artist physically altered the gallery's architecture to control light and create a specific viewing rhythm, synthesizing materials and techniques from Chinese ink painting traditions with Western geometric abstraction and oil painting.
Zheng's work is significant for its ambitious attempt to merge two divergent art historical lineages—Eastern ink painting and Western oil painting—into a new, personal synthesis. Moving beyond issues of fixed personal identity, she uses ancient forms to explore constant change, positioning herself at the forefront of diasporic artists reinventing ink painting history while engaging with modernist concerns like light and site-specificity, as seen in influences ranging from classical Chinese scrolls to Robert Ryman.