TAIPEI DANGDAI 2023 | Hanart TZ Gallery Booth C09
11 May – 14 May 2023

Yeh Shih-Chiang 葉世強 Water Buffalo《騎牛》 2006  Ink on paper 水墨、紙本 137 × 301 cm

YEH Shih-Chiang

CHEN Lai-Hsing

LIN Chi-Wei

YEH Wei-Li

FAN Yang-Tsun

Exit. Escape. Remote. Beyond

Hanart TZ Gallery has always been committed to exploring and presenting the exchange, inheritance and interflow of the Chinese literati spirit and contemporary intellectual thought, and the international significance of this special dynamic.

In this latest iteration of Taipei Dangdai, Hanart is showcasing five Chinese artists whose works cover a rich range of media and concepts, yet who all reflect facets of the contemporary literati spirit: Yeh Shi-Chiang, Yeh Wei-Li, Chen Lai Hsing, Lin Chi-Wei, and Fan Yang-Tsun, the latter two who are exhibiting at the art fair for the first time.

The exhibition title, “Exit. Escape. Remote. Beyond”, signifies Hanart TZ’s investigation of the defining quality of contemporary literati artistic practice, that is, the pursuit of deep cultivation of one’s artistic craft, and the physical and psychological state of remoteness or reclusion. Each of these five artists has, in his own way, chosen to live a life apart from the mainstream, and insisted on following his own path. They all evince little interest in materialism, instead placing the highest value on being unfettered and unimpeded in their artistic visions and pursuits.  How an artist can live a life that is in harmony with his ideals, is a perennial concern of artists.

Installation artist and photographer Yeh Wei-Li (b.1971), pioneering noise-artist and painter Lin Chi-Wei (b.1971), music instrument maker and lacquer artist Fan Yang-Tsun (b.1970) are mid-career artists born in the same generation. They share a similarly intensive literati vision: focusing on a sustained and meticulous practice that encompasses their mutual sense of transformation between themselves and the rooted environment in Taiwan in which they live.

“Constellations: Yeh Shih-Chiang | Yeh Wei-Li”, Published by RIZZOLI in April 2023

In April 2023 the world-renowned art-book publishing house Rizzoli proudly released “Constellations: Yeh Shih-Chiang | Yeh Wei-Li”. This remarkable volume is the first illustrated book in English focused on the extraordinary life and work of Yeh Shih-Chiang, one of Taiwan’s most reclusive and enigmatic artists. “Constellations” is also the first major art book that Rizzoli has published on a Taiwanese artist, making it a particularly significant contribution to the field. Featuring more than 120 color plates and texts by leading international art critic Boris Groys, curators Corinne Diserens, Chang Tsong Zung, and Taiwanese scholars Cheng Tsun-Shing and Tseng Shao-Chien, this book offers reflections and insights into Yeh Shih-Chiang’s art and life, as well as the deeply felt experiential journey of Yeh Wei-Li, who has been re-imagining and re-creating the life and living spaces of Yeh Shih-Chiang for almost a decade. The official Taiwan launch of “Constellations” will take place at the Hanart TZ Gallery booth at Taipei Dangdai. It is an event not to be missed, especially by collectors and aficionados of Yeh Shih-Chiang’s art.​

In tandem with the book launch, the Ideas Forum at 2023 Taipei Dangdai will present Rizzoli European editor Anne Renahan in conversation with curator Chang Tsong-Zung and artist Yeh Wei-Li, as they reflect on the origins and process of this major five-year publishing project.

Constellations: Yeh Shih-Chiang and Yeh Wei-Li
—- A Conversation / One Story / Two Books
13 May, Saturday, 11:30-12:30
TAIPEI DANGDAI

Yeh Shih-Chiang 葉世強  Clouds over Five Chinese Egrets《五黃嘴 鶴上白雲》  2011
Oil on canvas 油彩、畫布  142 × 121.5 cm

YEH Shih-Chiang (1926-2012)

Yeh Shih-Chiang (1926-2012) is a near-legendary figure in Taiwan, known for his simple but uncompromising way of life and his creative methods inspired by the purity of his Zen practice. A painter, calligrapher and crafter of guqin instruments, Yeh infused into his works the aesthetics of simplicity and cultivated taste of the literati tradition but with a modern flavor. This exhibition features rare examples of Yeh Shih-Chiang’s small and medium-sized works, characterized by a richness of inkplay, spontaneous fluid energy of line and a visionary purity of composition.

Chen Lai-Hsing 陳來興  Street Fury《街頭激情》  1988  Oil on canvas 油彩、畫布  128 × 95 cm

CHEN Lai-Hsing (b.1949)

Chen Lai Hsing emerged as a major figure on the Taiwanese art scene of the 1980s, known for paintings that are vibrant, forceful and deeply humanistic. Yet Chen always has been an outlier, choosing to live the life of kind of artistic ronin. Chen’s works are full of emotion, communicating a concern for the suffering of others, an adherence to justice, and a kind of rustic optimism. The energy, roughness and disruptive power of his paintings both moves and uplifts, and quickly established Chen’s reputation as ‘Taiwan’s Van Gogh.” No other painter so eloquently expresses the atmosphere and vibrancy of Taiwan’s urban-rural transition period and of the social turmoil characterizing that era of explosive social movements.

Lin Chi-Wei 林其蔚  Mountain of Nāgas《龍山》  2022  Acrylic on Canvas 壓克力彩、畫布  130 × 97 cm

LIN Chi-Wei (b.1971)

Lin Chi-Wei, currently living in France, is a cross-disciplinary artist and a pioneer of sound art in Taiwan. An active member of the student movements and underground cultural scene of the 1990s, Lin was part of the experimental noise group “Zero and Sound Liberation Organization.” Lin is also a painter, creating works that embody a musical, analogical beat that speaks against repression and stacked results. Rather than developing from pre-conceived ideas, Lin’s works emerge from a deep process of spontaneous engagement whereby the artist receives feedback and guidance from the image as it develops during the painting process. Painting for Lin is thus a process of continual destruction and reconstruction, a state of consciousness that is both unknown and familiar. Lin has also been inspired by the changing visual syncopation of the landscape paintings of Taiwan senior artist Yu Chengyao. In Lin’s own painterly dialectic of repetition and change, we seem able to read the flow of sound, ultimately resolving into a form of landscape composed of shimmering three-color rainbow light.

Yeh Wei-Li 葉偉立  Carp《鯉魚》

2023  Giclee Print on Canson Rag Photographique, 310g  藝術微噴、康頌平滑攝影藝術紙  129 × 104 cm

YEH Wei-Li (b.1971)

Yeh Wei-Li’s photographic works are visual expressions of a powerful, organic artistic practice woven of attention, experience, imagination and labor. Through a process of slow, sustained labor, Yeh enacts a gradual transformation of the spaces which he inhabits and to which he is responding. His photographic method is to seek for a specific node of connection that emerges in the moment, and then press the shutter. That moment of pressing the shutter, counterbalanced by the long hours of labor that proceeded and will follow it, creates a felt tension of push and pull—the monumental, visually dense photographs produced are akin to dramatic freeze-frames.  In Yeh Wei-Li’s new photographic series, in addition to his deep study of Yeh Shih-Chiang’s works enacted over the years he has spent in the secluded space of Shuinandong, we witness the way he uses his hands to create a new humanistic and natural environment, where new buds are cultivated. Here, a multi-layered space for photography is revealed: Yeh’s photographic art now becomes a signifier of ethical land practice and culture.

FAN Yang-Tsun (b.1970)

Fan Yang-Tsun has lived and worked in seclusion, in his studio located in the midst of a hillside orchard plantation in Hsinchu County, since 2007. Fan moved there after returning to Taiwan from Spain, where he studied modern jewelry design. Fan has a deep interest in traditional practices, including the art of tea, woodworking, bamboo crafting, lacquerwork and instrument making. In 2009, he began to develop and create his own lacquer musical instruments, boldly attempting to dismantle and reorganize traditional structures and materials. The result is a series of lacquer musical instruments that astonish with their unique forms and conceptual breakthroughs: they are at once elegant, delicately crafted and boldly innovative.