Ching Ho Cheng (1946–89), a Chinese-American artist who described himself as working "with paper, instead of on it," is the subject of a revival of interest, including a current solo show at Bank gallery's New York outpost featuring his airbrushed gouache works from the mid-to-late 1970s. Cheng, who lived and worked in Suite 903 of New York's Chelsea Hotel, created spiritual, experimental works ranging from psychedelic paintings to torn-paper pieces and monumental oxidized sculptures, before his career was cut short by AIDS-related complications. His papers at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art were digitized in 2024, and his work will be included in a group show at the Whitney Museum of American Art and a major institutional retrospective at the Addison Gallery of American Art in 2027.
This revival matters because Cheng, despite being collected by major institutions like the Hirshhorn Museum and the Brooklyn Museum during his lifetime, has remained less known than his contemporaries due to his lack of an easily identifiable signature style and his out-of-sync focus on gouache during the era of conceptual art. The upcoming retrospective and monograph, co-published by the Addison Gallery and Visual AIDS, are expected to launch a watershed moment for interest in his life and work, bringing long-overdue recognition to an artist whose themes of impermanence and transience resonate deeply with contemporary audiences.