Background
An American of Chinese descent, Ching Ho Cheng was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1946. Ching was the son of Chiang Kai-shek"s last ambassador to Cuba.
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Ching Ho Cheng
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During the mid-1960s he studied painting at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City, and during the early seventies lived in Paris and Amsterdam, where, in 1976, he had his first one-man show.
Career
Cheng returned to New York that same year and checked into the Chelsea Hotel intending to remain for two months. He lived and worked there until his death in May 1989. Ching Ho Cheng created artwork from torn paper.
To create these variously scaled abstract pieces, Cheng applied iron powder to torn paper which was sealed with waterproof layers of gesso, mat medium and modelling paste employed to create a sense of relief.
He used a special catalyst to begin a lengthy chemical process of transforming the iron into rust. The paper was soaked in water for days and dried, acquiring a hard surface.
Cheng controlled the process by deciding when to remove the paper from the washington Cheng would sometimes resoak the paper in order to obtain the desired surface and textural coloration.
At a time when Asian-Americans were nearly absent from the contemporary art scene, Cheng was highly regarded by peers and by prominent art historians such as Gert Schiff and Henry Geldzahler, the first curator of twentieth-century art at the Metropolitan Museum of Artist
Cheng exhibited his work extensively in New York and overseas.
