Fu Qiumeng Fine Art is proud to announce Shufa Essentials, a group exhibition devoted to Shufa (書法). It will be on view from September 11 to October 25, 2025, at Fu Qiumeng Fine Art, 65 East 80th Street, New York. A public opening reception will be held on Thursday, September 11, from 5 to 8 PM.
Often translated as “Chinese calligraphy,” Shufa is rooted in a different framework that is shaped by the unique nature of Chinese characters—logographs that are at once visual, phonetic, and ideographic. This foundation allows Shufa to unite language, philosophy, and artistic expression into a single art form. Perhaps the best translation is to embrace Shufa as its own term. In the hands of the artist, characters unfold not only as words but also as pure form, alive with cadence, rhythm, and energy.
For more than two thousand years, artists have used brush, ink, and paper not only as tools of writing but as instruments of expression. Every stroke is a trace of the artist’s presence—a line shaped by rhythm, vitality, and state of mind. With no erasures and no second chances, each mark preserves the immediacy of its making, a visible record of body and spirit joined in a single moment.
This exhibition highlights three principles at the heart of the tradition. The centered use of the brush channels balance and strength into every stroke. Handmade paper, unyielding yet responsive, registers each decision without disguise. And Qi—often described as breath or vital energy—animates the work, infusing it with rhythm, mood, and life.
Through selected works and interpretive guides, Shufa Essentials invites visitors to follow the artist’s hand, sense the flow of ink on paper, and encounter Shufa as one of China’s most profound and enduring artistic traditions—an art that is at once writing and image, continuity and expression, discipline and spirit.
