Artist's own blood, pencil, paper
The first phase of “ReVision” is composed of selected art pieces representing the achievements of MSAC’s role as an art consultancy and the collection of the organization, unfolding our viewpoint on contemporary art. Participating artists include Marina CRUZ, Nona GARCIA, William KENTRIDGE, LIN Chuan-Chu, QIN Qi, Robin RHODE, Anri SALA, SHI Jin-Hua, Juin SHIEH, Rodel TAPAYA, ZHANG Enli, and ZHOU Yilun.
Gallerists, consultants, collectors as well as artists all exert important influences on the development of art scene. MSAC is honored to work with collectors of great tastes and visions and is pleased to show for the first time in Taiwan some of the great art works we have dealt with, amongst which is A Sack by ZHANG Enli. Chinese artist ZHANG Enli has earned his global reputation with his oeuvre of pure painterly quality, making him standing out uniquely from his peers who often keen on social-political issues or icon creation. In his 2011 painting A Sack, the artist depicted an ordinary object with a quiet alienation while revealed the traces of people’s activities and their relationships with the environment, pondering on the reality of contemporary life.
Albania born artist Anri Sala mainly works with video, or time-based installation, through which he conveys his thoughts on the transitory and ephemeral characters of life. His “Ravel-Ravel-unRavel” shown in the French pavilion at Venice Biennale 2013 has won highly appreciative criticisms. Sala’s 2003 work 31°-131, acquired by a respected collector under MSAC’s consultancy during the artist’s emergence, demonstrates the broad and advance view of MSAC. Established artists William KENTRIDGE’s Wildebeest and Robin RHODE’s Pots are also examples showing MSAC’s endeavour to assist collectors forming great art collections of their dreams.
Representational pieces of MSAC’s own collection are also shown in “ReVision”, including a recently completed piece by Taiwanese artist SHI Jin-Hua, The Thousand Days, after nearly three years of work. According to The Sutra of Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha's Fundamental Vows, SHI chanted “Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha” a thousand times per day for a thousand days. He stamped his own blood drop for measuring blood sugar level on a piece of paper everyday and wrote down the number of which he had chanted the name of Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha that day underneath the blood drop. The Thousand Days conveys the artist’s comprehension about change: one can only transform oneself and the world by concentrating on steady efforts with perseverance.
The restlessness and anxiety of Chinese artist ZHOU Yilun comes from his questioning of this era of individual lifestyles. In his 2009 work Portraits of 17 Teenagers, the artist depicted the young generation in an instinctively rough way, probing into the vigor, emotional agitation and twisted personalities of this era with sharp criticism and satire. Marina CRUZ’s 2014 painting In the House of Memory was inspired by the artist’s 2012 solo exhibition of the same title at MSAC. The painting thus not only endowed with memory and family history, but also reflects an important period of CRUZ’s artistic journey and marks the successful collaboration between the artist and MSAC.
