CHICAGO — When I learned that an exhibition by Leah Ke Yi Zheng, curated by Myriam Ben Salah and Karsten Lund, would be coming to the Renaissance Society, I timed an engagement I had in Chicago so I could see her work. My only regret was that I did not have enough time to go twice, as I did with her New York debut exhibition at David Lewis Gallery in 2023, which I reviewed . I also realized that I am still learning how to see Zheng’s work, which is one of the great pleasures of looking at art. As much pleasure, intellectual stimulation, and self-reflection as I got from her work, and its engagement with Western oil painting and Eastern ink painting, I feel Zheng is at the beginning of something momentous — how these two divergent cultural histories can be synthesized into one. I believe that she is at the forefront of Asian-born artists reinventing the history of ink painting, while living in the diaspora.…