Venue | Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center
Booth No.| 1D34
Preview | 26-27 March, 2025
Open to Public | 28-30 March, 2025
Mind Set Art Center is honored to present “Flâneurs Across Spaces” at the Galleries section of Art Basel Hong Kong 2025. The group exhibition is set to showcase the latest artworks of nine artists from Taiwan and abroad. They are Marina Cruz, Rao Fu, Dani Ghercã, Lee Ming-tse, Lin Wei-Hsiang, Ana Maria Micu, Juin Shieh, Tang Jo-Hung and Wu Tseng Jung. In the Kabinett sector, we will put on display “Pencil Walker” as a memorial to late Taiwanese artist Shi Jin-Hua. The event is scheduled to run from 28 to 30 March, 2025, at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center. The preview session will kick off at noon, March 26. We extend a warm invitation to all of you.
Crossing the Boundaries of Space and Time
The artworks in “Flâneurs Across Spaces” focus on two common themes in art: “time and space” and “roaming”. The artworks illuminate different paths and lead the viewers into their own imaginary journey. Rao Fu, a Chinese artist living in Germany, explores the depth of humanity through his paintings. He combines real-life and iconographic elements in his compositions and further enriches them with myths and saturated colors. Fu’s artworks bring us onto an epic journey that connects the ancient and the present. In an era of widespread unease and rising tension, Rao Fu tries to reawaken our senses and reflect deeply on our current conflicts and challenges. Different from Fu’s exploration of the world’s current turmoil and people’s inner thoughts from multiple vintage points in space and time, Romanian artist Dani Ghercã uses aerial photography to transform the image of global metropolitans into highly simplistic abstract liens and textures. Through his stylized birds-eye-views, Ghercã peers into the undercurrent of cities and the psychological spaces of its inhabitants and conveys a strong interpretation and criticism of the sense of alienation of permeates modern urban landscapes. Tang Jo-Hung from Taiwan highlights the differences in composition and style in his 2024 painting “In a Story”. He’s managed to create a contrast between the everyday and the historic, between the present and the past, while at the same time, adopts different techniques on the portrait of the man in front and of the group of four men in the distance to showcase the distinct qualities of different techniques.
The Spiritual Journey Through the Human Landscape
Lin Wei-Hsiang and Wu Tseng Jung, both from Taiwan, respectively uses watercolor and oil painting to portray the local landscape. Much akin to the literati painters of the past, both Lin and Wu find inspiration from the mountains, and they imbue their paintings with the charm of the olden times. One applies free-handed brush work while the other emphasizes on serenity, the two artists lead the viewers onto a spiritual journey that connects the mind with nature. Lee Ming-tse focuses on Taiwanese folk culture. He names his new ink brush series after the street names in Kaohsiung city. This adds a new element of human touch in his brush work that straddles the line be collage and abstraction, and allows him to trail a new path in the age-old medium.
An Emotional Journey Through the Feminine Space
Taiwanese female artist Juin Shieh has made “Crumpled Memory IV-3”, a mixed media work that combines sketches and epoxy and serves as a metaphorical recreation of the feminine space that’s shrouded in mystery and colors. She expresses, through her art, her unique perspective on the experience of the female body, as well as the common sentiment among contemporary women who have to struggle to overcome many obstacles. Also inspired by women’s bodily experience, Filipino woman artist Marina Cruz roots her creative journey in the history of her maternal family. Besides her documenting of family clothing ideas through painting, photography and sculpture, Cruz also records and reconstructs the living space of her family’s living space into an ever-growing artistic organism. Her new painting, titled “After the Flood I”, portrays a view of her family house after a flood receded. The floor, rocks, potted plants, windows and wooden walls are all painted with exhaustive details. And through these details, Cruz manages to connects emotions associated to the house the landscapes in its surroundings. Ana Maria Micu, from Romania, looks into her own living environment in search for subject matters. As she observes her surroundings and reflects upon herself, the artist has made a large number of self-portraits that reflect the elapsing of time and allow her to capture and witness the many moments from the planting to the withering of her own plants.
Kabinett Sector
Pencil Walker – Shi Jin-Hua
In the “Kabinett” sector of ABHK 2025, Mind Set Art Center will present “Pencil Walker”, a representative work of concept and performance artist Shi Jin-Hua, who unfortunately passed away in a traffic accident on June 28, 2024. Shi first presented the performance of “A 100km Walk” at ABHK in 2017 and garnered massive attention from the international art scene.
“Pencil Walker” has become almost synonymous as Shi Jin-Hua himself, who dedicated himself from 1996 to 2015 to create the large-scale installation piece. The artist initially set up an almost 10-meter-wide white wall panel in front of which he walked back and forth while dragging a pencil along the surface and reciting mantras from the “Heart Sutra”, a key Buddhist scripture. Each session of “walking the pencil” lasted for about two hours and fifteen minutes and is a rigorous test of the artist’s physical and mental endurance. Shi essentially becomes one with his own practice and transcends his life force into the infinite number of pencil lines. During the process, the artist and Buddhist practitioner goes through the process of repentance, which leads to purification and salvation of his soul.
