Wandering in the realm of vision: the beauty I have seen

art critic / Sun Xiaotong

In spring that people can breathe and stretch freely, it is interesting to re-read the works of four artists: Hsiao Chufang, Lee Peishan, Wang Liangyin, Chen Kueiyen and wander in the visual realm created by them. Born in the 1970s and 1980s, what they have in common is that they all create paintings for a long time. In terms of style, their works are rich in color, depicting specific images or symbols. There is even an obvious narrative in the picture: certain events are happening, a dynamic image that suddenly stops, or a slice of the life landscape, or a still with lots of meaning. It attracts people to temporarily deviate from reality and walk into a fantastic space laid by the artist.

Hsiao Chufang, who just published solo exhibition "Hi! Ni hao!" at Taipei Fine Arts Museum last year, her paintings always associate of single-frame comics without dialogue. Behind the simple lines are actually the artist’s observation and thinking about daily life. She used to paint every day and has accumulated a large number of charcoal sketches. These diary-like images become the material when making large-scale works. In recent paintings, she used more transparent pigments, stacked in consecutive circled lines, in addition to emphasizing the level of brushstrokes in the picture. Also, record the rhythm of the body while painting. Cross-referenced with face symbols on the top, a simple story has a climactic plot. Respond to the sorrow and joy in reality.

In many cases, art does not provide explanation. Only a way to get over it. For Li Peishan, painting is her way of responding to reality and projecting fantasy. In the "Yellow Hibiscus" series, she tries to explore the limit of human perception: each species has a special structure developed in response to its evolution and survival needs. In terms of vision, the world that humans "see" may be quite different from that of insects. When painting has surpassed the function of representing things, flowers or landscapes are just images and carriers. Through color, shape and structure, the artist explores other possibilities beyond people's conventional cognition. Those magical scenes release more information beyond perception and multiple perspectives for viewing the world.

Extracting familiar scenes from daily life, Wang Liangyin is good at using bright and contrasting tones to give objects such as desserts or dolls a dramatic texture. Like a sumptuous festive feast, it brings visual stimulation. However, when you go deeper into the picture more carefully, you will gradually discover the hidden gloom behind the brightness. For the artist, painting is a way to juxtapose contradictions in reality: truth and fiction, sweetness and obscurity, noise and loneliness, eternity and evanescence. All opposites exist in harmony. Detached from the appearance of material, those shapes and colors between figurative and abstract reflect the inner needs and desires of the audience.

Every scene in Chen Kueiyen's works is like a theater. They all seem to have an ongoing plot, which can be interpreted as a profound allegory or a fictional scene between reality and the subconscious. The artist stacked fragments of imagination, dreams, religion, history, and mythology with thick brushstrokes and colors, fabricated and reorganized them into poetic landscapes. Describe those unfamiliar yet familiar events and episodes that seem to be happening now. Chen Kueiyen's paintings seem to be far away from real life, yet, very close to people's living conditions. And, he used to write short essay for each work. Readers can regard it as a reminder of artistic conception or an independent writing. Those words are not an annotation of painting, but the possibility of perception outside the visual frame. It became another way to communicate with all audiences, including the creator.

Say goodbye to the gloom of the epidemic, here comes 2023 which symbolizes hope and restart. Artists calm themselves in creation. And we see the unique beauty of ourselves and the world from their perspective.