Mind Set Art Center will celebrate its 15th anniversary with two special exhibitions set between June and September: “The Tree of Life” and “Shi Jin-Hua”. “The Tree of Life” is scheduled to run from June 7 through August 8, and it will continue the curatorial direction of MSAC’s 5th-anniversary exhibition, “Revision”, and the 10th-anniversary showcase, “As Life Goes On”. The exhibition will feature fifteen artists from Taiwan, Asia, and Europe, and showcase the fruit of our collaboration in the last 15 years. The exhibition also reflects on the gallery’s growth, as symbolized by “The Tree of Life”, and looks ahead to MSAC’s next fifteen years. The second exhibition, “Shi Jin-Hua”, will run from August 16 to September 25 as a memorial for artist Shih Jin-Hua, who passed away in a tragic accident in the summer of 2024. Both exhibitions hold profound significance for us at Mind Set Art Center. The opening reception for “The Tree of Life” will be held on Saturday, June 7, at 3:00 PM, followed by a panel discussion on “Artists, Galleries, and the Market” on the afternoon of June 21. We cordially invite you to join us for the exhibition.
Behind “The Tree of Life”, the title of MSAC’s 15th anniversary exhibition, is a beautiful story of a collector’s enduring support for the gallery and its artists. When MSAC was first established in the spring of 2010, collector Dr. Chen Po-Wen planted a knee-high tea olive in his garden to mark the occasion. Fifteen years later, the sapling has grown into a full-size tree standing over 2.5 meters tall. It has become a living symbol of MSAC’s journey. Around the tree’s third year, I suggest to Dr. Chen that I would prune it annually, trimming away the unnecessary to help foster its growth. On several New Year’s Days, I visited Chen’s place in Beitou, either by myself or with MSAC’s colleagues and artists, to tend to the tree. “The Tree of Life” is thus befitting as an exhibition title as it carries profound significance to us, our collectors, and the artists we champion.
The exhibition brings together fifteen artists from Taiwan, Asia, and Europe. They including Buen Calubayan, Chou Kai-Lun, Marina Cruz, Syaiful Garibaldi, Dani Ghercã, Rao Fu, Lin Wei-Hsiang, Ana Maria Micu, Shinji Ohmaki, Albert Yonathan Setyawan, Juin Shieh, Tang Jo-Hung, Rinus Van de Velde, Bogdan Vlăduță and Yang Yu-Ning. Their works span various mediums such as painting, installation, sculpture, photography, and mixed media, exploring the themes of "plants" and "time”, which are the two aspects of the symbolic Tree of Life. Stylistically, the exhibition encompasses realistic and expressionist paintings, contemporary reinterpretations of ink brush paintings, as well as reflections on spatial and three-dimensional compositions.
As one of the most classic traditions in painting, realistic art has always held a significant place in contemporary painting. The works of two female artists, Marina Cruz and Ana Maria Micu, showcase their extraordinary observation and exceptional depiction of plants and the passage of time. Micu’s latest gouache piece, “an odd dream came to him ... Turn back now”, blends pigments and water to capture the interplay between potted plants on the ground and shifting light, creating a sense of temporal movement. Meanwhile, Cruz’s “Reflecting on Plants Clinging on Walls” incorporates the light refraction in her compositions. By combining abstract color swatches and collage techniques, the artist transforms a corner of a house long affected by flooding into a humid, tropical space of femininity that emits fluid aesthetics as time and flood make their marks.
The theme of plant are also found in the works of artists Bogdan Vlăduțăand Yang Yu-Ning. In his “Umbrella Pines” series, Vlăduță employs fluid and energetic brushstrokes to capture the resilience and rugged grandeur of pine trees. Meanwhile, his “Roots”, depicting gnarled and entangled tree roots, reveals the profound influence of Vincent Van Gogh on his artistry. Yang Yu-Ning’s recent piece, “Cluster of Travellers”, personifies two banana trees as a couple of travellers. The two are different in height, and are rendered with ink tones of different grey tones to evoke a moving rhythm of companionship, and to open a multilayered dialogue between ink painting, photography, and traditional brushwork.
In his “Trees”, Tang Jo-Hung adopts a microscopic, near-abstract approach to portray dense foliage with feathery, floating imagery. His blending of reality and imagination in a dynamic composition conveys the artist’s whimsically humorous sensibility. In his “As the Fog Rises” series, Lin Wei-Hsiang delicately renders a lyrical scene infused with the softness of breeze, fragrance, and birdsong. The wilderness and forest where mist disperses evokes a certain moment in our memory — a tranquil and poetic morning — that Lin has distilled for eternity with his brush.
Therapy for Emotions & Transcendence of Spirit
“Art is a therapeutic medium that can help guide, exhort and console its viewers, enabling them to become better version of themselves.” — Alain de Botton, “Art as Therapy”
Indonesian artists Albert Yonathan Setyawan’s installation “Palingenesis I” exemplifies De Botton’s theory in art’s power of healing. The creation process healed the artist himself, and the display of the completed piece healed the viewers. Arranged in a mandala-like pattern, the work quiets the mind and elevates the viewer's spirit through its ritualistic, repetitive composition — as if one were stepping into a sacred space where art and religion intertwine. Similarly, Japanese artist Shinji Ohmaki's “Flotage - Landscape on the Back” series reinterprets "Torso", a classic theme in sculpture, by employing the drip painting technique and creates a moment of rebirth in the history of sculpture. Dani Ghercã, known for his aerial photography, has produced a series of photos from high altitude. By stripping away details and color, the artist achieves a high level of simplicity in his compositions and muted tones form a near-abstract image. His work presents us a bird’s-eye view of a city’s space and texture, and transforms the alienation between humans in contemporary society into visual poetry.
Also employing a poetic approach to elevate artistry, Fu Rao’s exhibited works “Midday Rendezvous” and “Boudoir” showcase his eternal exploration of human life through bold brushstrokes and vibrant colors. The series depicts a man and his dog outdoors, and a reclining woman on a with her cat indoors. Whether in composition, color, space, or the relationship between the subjects and their pets, there is a deliberate symmetry between the two scenes. The man, lost in melancholic contemplation, and the girl, caught in a dreamlike state, are both immersed in their own thoughts. Whether reminiscing about the past or longing for the future, the two figures reveal timeless human emotions such as love, yearning, separation, jealousy, among others. And through them, Fu has transformed ordinary moments into universal reflections on existence.
