Mind Set Art Center is thrilled to launch artist LIN Chuan-Chu's brand new solo exhibition Rock, Moonlight and Mountain Flower Path at the beginning of 2024. This is the third solo exhibition held at the gallery by Lin Chuan-Chu following the 2020’s “Interpretation”. The exhibition's nearly one hundred plein air landscape paintings present the artist's creative process of being in nature, admiring nature, and drawing from nature. As we read the artist's exuberant and fluid painting strokes intersecting with traditional ink, we also step into his exploration and transformation as a conduit of artistic production on the planet earth. The exhibition will be held from January 20 to March 2, and will kick off with a talk between Lin Chuan-Chu and Shen Yu-Chang at 2:30 PM on January 20 (Saturday), followed by an opening reception at 4 PM, We cordially invite your presence.
Entering his golden years, LIN Chuan-Chu has dedicated over three decades of his artistry to the sublimation of simplicity and form found within nature's rich beauty. His plein air journeys are deep dialogues with the land and himself, culminating in a unique fusion and balance achieved through the refinement of brushwork techniques, akin to the productive labor of farmers, fishermen, and lumberjacks of this land. Whether it's the inconspicuous dunes by the harbor, the exhilarating cliffs of Longdong Bay, or the tender yellow flowers trembling in the strong winds at Heping Island Geopark, LIN Chuan-Chu admires and gazes at them with unmatched passion, capturing them in his paintings; he believes in the unexpected colors they provide at the stroke of his brush, the surprising compositions, rich details, and the endless inspiration. The perennial clarity of the water in LIN Chuan-Chu's brush-rinsing bowl particularly reveals the essence of his technique—practical flexibility, rich modulation—he maximizes the traditional ink wash's depth and tonal variations, with strokes that combine the intensity and variation of calligraphic lines, using up nearly all the ink on the paper. What seems to be the ancient maxim of 'treasuring ink like gold' is actually a testament to his delicate control and the philosophical witness of his artistry.
As an artist dominated and inspired by nature, LIN Chuan-Chu's landscape paintings also resonate and progress with the artistic predecessors of different eras, from the Song Dynasty landscape painting masters to YU Chengyao, GUO Bochuan, and even contemporary artists like David Hockney. Hockney, who visited China in 1981, was profoundly influenced by the viewing method of traditional Chinese scrolls and their characteristic of reverse perspective, which was later reflected in his photography and plein air works. The nourishment of Hockney's creativity by Chinese traditional painting has undoubtedly also nurtured Lin Chuan-Chu, further enriching the context of his perspective-taking and further inspiring his color expression. In Small Flower Under the Cliff I, the color ink permeates and blends on the paper like an abstract background improvised in dance, with richly interwoven lines and brushstrokes outlining the contours of the plant's stems and veins and their robust vitality. Purple Mountains employs more freely primitive brush and ink lines, rough and vigorous amid the undulating mountain ridges, parallel to its gentle warmth. Heping Island Geo Park II, with its transitions between tight and loose strokes and layers of color, exhibits the gentle and fierce yet always affectionate essence of nature. As the artist wrote in his own words: "If many artists see nature as a distant, objectified subject, then one must traverse individual life, daily living, social structure, the atmosphere of the era, and cultural context before finally reaching the grand theme of nature; I am not such a person, or rather, I am someone who blends the aforementioned process and relationships into one, where nature is actually the theme of my field studies, my way of life, my admired culture, and my trusted order. In the end, that exalted nature becomes the reflection of my spirit, we are each other's inside and out, just like that.”
About the artist
LIN Chuan-Chu was born in Wanli, New Taipei in 1963. He received his B.F.A. in Chinese painting from Chinese Cultural University in Taipei, and attended M. A. program in Art History at Fine Arts Academy of China, Beijing. In 2000, he received his M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts from the Goddard College in Vermont, U.S.A. He taught at Tunghai University as an Assistant Professor. In 2008, he moved back to his hometown and started to immerse himself in nature and creation.
Switching identities between a literato and a farmer, LIN Chuan-Chu is regarded as the distinct artist in Taiwan contemporary art scene. Through the various media from painting, land art projects, performance, animation to writing, he found a complex yet complete interdisciplinary art inwardness to inquire into the nature of the flow within existence.
Composed of nature, farming, literati culture as well as awareness of Buddhism, his creations constructed “A Man’s History” which is a complicated, authentic and separated being, attempting to unearth the shared themes lying in his family and the whole society at the time. His signature artwork “Landscape Journal” was selected for the top exhibition in 2007 by the Yearbook of Artist Magazine 40th anniversary.
