For the past two years, the New Ink Movement has been a hot topic in the art market, with Sotheby’s and Christie’s interest in the traditional ink medium, spurring record-breaking sales of contemporary ink painting. Today, artists are breathing new life into the age-old art form. Pondering this fusion of East and West, tradition and innovation, Tina Keng Gallery opens a dialogue on the evolution of the ink medium, and the mix of past and present. Bringing together Yang Mao-Lin, Yao Jui-chung, Chen Chun-Hao, Peng Wei, and Su Meng-hung from Tina Keng Gallery, and Charwei Tsai and Wu Chi-Tsung from TKG+, the gallery’s contemporary platform, we hope to highlight their aesthetic experiments that shed new light on Asian contemporary art.
Instilling childlike innocence in his work, Yang Mao-Lin unveils his tiny sculptures, a set of 5 comics duos that stands as a playful interpretation of the Taiwanese comics culture. Abandoning the usual Chinese brush and ink, Yao Jui-chung breaks the boundaries between East and West by utilizing the needle-point pen and oils in his landscape paintings that trace their roots back to the traditional shan shui genre. Light and shadows materialize in Chen Chun-Hao’s mosquito-nailed shan shui painting, where he transforms the flat canvas into a three-dimensional landscape that exists between past and present. Su Meng-hung extracts classic Chinese elements of flowers and birds from the work of Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), and makes them his own sarcastic metaphors for the extravagant lifestyle of the rich and famous. Continuing her exploration in experimental painting, Peng Wei changes her canvas from embroidered shoes and couture garments to the Chinese round fan, on which Western literary symbols and Chinese femininity intertwine.
The two artists from TKG+present a collection of works distinguished by the artists’ repetitive body movements. Charwei Tsai handwrote the Buddhist text Heart Sutraon a large piece of incense, before she placed it on a mirror reflecting the skyline of Hong Kong, and lit it up as an offering to the city and as an act of contemplation on transience. Venturing into the ambiguous terrain between traditional painting and digital imaging, Wu Chi-Tsung reinterprets the landscape through a careful wielding of film, photography, and printing theories, giving Asian contemporary art a modern twist.
During Art Taipei 2014, TKG+is pleased to announce the opening of Yuan Goang-Ming’s solo exhibition on November 1. Shuttle service is available on the day of the opening, from the exhibition venue of Art Taipei (Taipei World Trade Center) to TKG+in Neihu. The shuttle leaves at 6:00 p.m. More information is available at Booth B04.