ART TAIPEI 2022
Mind Set Art Center (MSAC) is honored to present the latest works of 12 artists at booth E04 of the Galleries section of 2022 Art Taipei. The artists include Buen CALUBAYAN, Marina CRUZ, Rui Miguel Leitão Ferreira, Rao FU, LEE Ming-tse, LIN Wei-Hsiang, Ana Maria MICU, Shinji OHMAKI, SHI Jin-Hua, Juin SHIEH, TANG Jo-Hung, WU Tseng Jung, and Mo ZHANG. The art fair is scheduled from October 21 to 24 at the Taipei World Trade Center, with a preview session set for October 20, starting at 12:00 p.m.
This presentation entitled “The Poem of Landscape” showcases the artworks by a strong lineup of the gallery’s artists whom depict their observation of world and understanding of life through the act of painting. By “seeing” and “translating’, they review the theme of “landscape and men” and investigate how forms of painting can be reshaped at present time; that is, to transform “men” and “objects” into poetic landscapes, to reconnect the actual landscape and artistic representation, and proceed to reactivate the conversation between them. With the presentation, we hope to deliberate the following two perspectives: Reflection and Transformation of Landscape Aesthetics, and Microcosm of Daily Life vs. Mythical Tales.
Reflection and Transformation of Landscape Aesthetics
SHI Jin-Hua, WU Tseng Jung and LIN Wei-Hsiang gracefully make art afloat with unique artistic languages with the coexistence of their minds and the physical eyes. They illustrate the reinterpretation of landscape aesthetics. Primed with ink, Pen Walking #183 delineates mountainscape composed of white pencil lines drawn by SHI Jin-Hua, a conceptual artist who constantly uses pencils as artistic representation to carry on his sacred journeys. The similar devotion also appears in WU Tseng Jung’s watercolor art. Turning to a full-time painter from an architect in his middle age, WU invents a unique technique of dampening and washing the palette that brings watercolor to a new realm of quality and expression. The composition, brushstroke, and color of his landscape paintings on display are outstandingly ambitious and demonstrate the aura of certainness. The strong style has contributed to a distinguish system in his practice. Aside from WU’s highly confident and expressive languages in the landscape paintings, LIN Wei-Hsiang applies soft textures on layers over layers to create a familiar but distinct imagery of landscape. It is rooted from the memories of the artist’s nature travels as well as multilayered imaginations during his painting movement. Landscape, memory, image, and mind saturated as paints in LIN’s canvas are beautifully transformed into an alluring landscape that freezes different seasons, moments, tones, and lights and shades.
The characteristics of being familiar but distinct can also be found in the works by Filipino artist Buen CALUBAYAN. His landscapes covered with sensibility indeed manifest complicated rational thinking and aerial perspective. The spreading brushstrokes all over the canvas lead to a boundless palette of feelings. The other Filipino artist Marina CRUZ has persistently had the conversation with the Philippines’ past through the investigation of objects from her maternal family. She develops a style in between figuration and abstraction and continues to weave a net brimmed with affections and distinctive landscapes. Ana Maria MICU, an artist from Romania, always discovers and creates novelty of painting in her living and studio space. The depiction of her studio corner represents where she lives and also a landmark in her practice.
Microcosm of Daily Life vs. Mythical Tales
Deeply immersed by Taiwanese folklore cultures, LEE Ming-tse produces paintings and mixed-media artwork blended Wuxia comics, traditional decorations in temples, and elements of ink brush paintings. He creatively integrates real-life materials into a hidden world (Jianghu) of overwhelming fantasy, and then transforms it into new appearances of art. LEE’s Landscape at the Peak (2022) comprises an abstract ink wash painting and a decorative floral frame in the artist’s collection. This combination opens a door to a massive spiritual world under the microscope of daily life, repositioning playfulness in art practice and consolidating the act of creating and collecting at the same time. Juin SHIEH who always creates with feminine consciousness and theoretical thinking delivers a new triptych Four Seasons, a drawing filled with sketch lines of decorative floral patterns of wallpaper and human body contours. It presents a world of sensibility within an interwoven maternal space.
Germany-based Chinese artist Rao FU brings forth a new series of paintings on paper mixed up with narrative scenes and romantic atmosphere of ambiguity and peculiarity. Being as FU’s painterly diary written by the brushstrokes, every painting exhibits the artist’s inner journey of fantasy. TANG Jo-Hung’s paintings contain great visual tensions and theatrical characters. His vivid color arrangements and affluent brushstrokes perfectly intertwine with the form as well as the context of theater in the process of visualization. Finally, Portugal artist Rui Miguel Leitão Ferreira makes his first appearance at Art Taipei presents a remarkable series of portraits and abstract paintings, in which loaded with smooth and abstract brushstrokes and lines in the background and mostly young and muscular men at the center. The visual structure and the brushstrokes strike a delicate balance between abstraction and expressionism, both serve to highlight the erupting energy and the youthful vigor.
