Calligraphy is one of the most venerated art forms in Chinese culture. In the digital age of advanced technological reproduction, how can this traditional art still flourish as a contemporary vehicle for knowledge, connecting an ancient past with contemporary philosophical enquiry?

In Out of the Blue six renowned Chinese artists investigate this question by offering transversal responses through works that fuse classicism with contemporaneity. Employing Alcantara as a common denominator, the artists explore the versatility of this avant-garde medium in creating works imbued with personal and collective memories. Merging ancient practices with a medium of the future, the thousand-year-old Chinese cultural heritage comes to the fore by acquiring new expressive potentialities.

The Apartment of the Princes at Palazzo Reale is transformed into vibrant experiences where site-specific installations respond to the aesthetics of the rooms by playing on visual affinities and contrasts. Ranging from digital projections to forests of ink on hanging scrolls, the artists draw on the roots of Chinese calligraphic practice to raise questions about the nature of humanity’s relation with the world through Daoist notions of temporality, life-force and participation.