Mind Set Art Center is honored to launch “Walk Your Own Path”, Lee Ming-tse’s second-ever solo exhibition at the gallery. The show consists of 20 sets of new works that Lee produced in the last three years, making it the first large-scale exhibit that presents his works across multiple mediums since 2009’s “I Love Taiwan and Love Southern Taiwan Even More” at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts. It also makes the first event in MSAC enters its fifteenth years.
For the exhibition, Lee Ming-tse will unveil a brand-new large-scale painting titled “Walk Your Own Patch”. The heavyweight hexaptych is measured at 11 meters wide, and it incorporates a wide range of visual elements. These include the local geographical features, Lee’s favorite characters such as Wuxia rangers and cartoon heroes, as well as images of cross-strait tension and the famous giant rubber duck. Lee’s brushwork incorporates the narrative nature and fine line control of the Chinese ink brush paintings. And with it, the artist has created a visual orchestra where mythologies intertwine legends, transcending the boundaries of time and space –– a trademark of Lee’s works.
Lee Ming-tse has often impressed people with his boundless imagination within the limited frame. In his recent series, Lee has made a total of 10 ink brush paintings with titles such as “Yisin” and “Shihcyuan”, names after ten roads in Kaohsiung City. In these paintings, the artist has combined techniques in collage with traditional ink brush elements to breathe new life into the age-old medium. Within the 60-centemeter wide circular frame, Lee has created journeys across time and space with simple brush lines, turning the paintings into portals to different worlds. Besides his paintings, Lee is also presenting several brand-new mixed media works in which he depicts key characters for local folklores. He uses sticks gauze and paper onto fiberglass bases, and proceeds to add elements of collage and burns off some of the edges, resulting in patch-like textures. This is Lee’s uniquely humorous way of evoking beautiful memories of a bygone era.
