Exhibition · Alisan Fine Art · New York
Alisan Fine Arts is excited to present Finding the Balance, Li Hongwei’s first New York City solo exhibition, on view from November 13th, 2026 through December 23rd, 2026. Based between Princeton, NJ and Beijing, China, Li is a unique artistic voice within the Chinese diaspora. He has taken the production of Chinese porcelain and metalwork into his own hands, harnessing these mediums to create his own contemporary vocabulary. In 2005, Li Hongwei left China to study ceramic art at the New York State College of Ceramics (Alfred University), receiving his MFA in 2007 and continuing to teach in New York for several years. At the same time, Li embarked on a remarkable exploration of ancient Chinese ceramics, and he began to fuse porcelain with contemporary materials, developing the various series of artworks on view in the current exhibition. One of the artist’s more significant discoveries involves the unpredictable glaze effects that appear in his ceramics—crystalline blooms that emerge at specific temperatures, or ‘atmospheres’, that he engineers within his kilns. These effects have existed since the Song Dynasty, although they have only been appreciated by a small audience over the centuries; Li’s efforts to master these crystalline glazes have led to works that are unlike any that have come before. His sculpture “transcends the monochrome examples of the Song dynasty, yet is more organic and mysterious than the Qing Dynasty examples, decorated with underglaze cobalt blue or copper red” (Andrew L. Maske, University of Kentucky). In terms of contemporary materials, Li’s medium of choice is stainless steel. He fuses, stacks, and embeds his ceramics into the highly reflective metal, using the light from the polished steel to exaggerate and accentuate his ceramic figures. In his Xuan series, the fluid, composite forms appear as water droplets frozen in time; in Upwelling of Gravity, the ceramic and steel appear to rise upward from their base. His perfectly tilted…