After an exciting 12-year run, Mind Set Art Center is moving to a new location at the Solar Technology Square, also known as Taipei’s gallery district. (New address: 1F, No. 20, Wenhu Street, Neihu dist., Taipei) The move allows the gallery to expand its space to over 300 m2, up from 120 m2. Together with nearly 30 collaborating artists, Mind Set Art Center is embarking on a new journey with loftier goals and grander ambitions. To commemorate the transition, the gallery will be holding its inaugural exhibition, “Flowing Light”, from January 8 to February 23, 2022.
“Flowing Light” features the works of 21 artists. Some of them have been collaborating with us for years, while several others are making their debut at the gallery. The list include JIA Aili, Rao FU, SHI Jinsong, WU Yiming, YU Ji, SHI Jin-hua, LEE Ming-tse, Juin SHIEH, YANG Shih-chih, TANG Jo-hung, LIN Wei-hsiang, Lee YANG, LEE Jo-mei, Shinji OHMAKI, Marina CRUZ, Ana Maria MICU, Nona GARCIA, Patricia EUSTAQUIO, Robert BITTENBENDER, Buen CALUBAYAN and Rinus Van de Velde. The artworks on display are created in a variety of media, including oil painting, ink brush painting, installation, concept and performance art. A common theme in all of the artworks is the flowing of time and space, which points to the exhibit’s title “Flowing Light”.
I remember reading Gabriel García Márquez’s short story “Light is Like Water” years ago. It tells the tale of two brothers playing with a rowboat, which was a gift from their father. They then shattered a light bulb so they can sail the boat in the light that floods their room. Towards the end of the story, the magic light released by the two brothers almost flooded the entire city. I was mesmerized by the imagery of shifting time and space created by the flowing light. The story is filled with fantasy, romance, poetry and vivid imagination, which I believe are the core elements of art. There has also been rich imagery of flowing light in Asian literature. Renowned Chinese poet Su Shi once wrote in his poem “The Former Ode on the Red Cliffs”, “The oars of laurel and the paddles of orchid strike the water that reflects the sparkling moon light as the boat moves upstream.” The poem paints a picture in which the moon in the sky and its reflection in the water come together to convey poetic emotions. The fabulous images portrayed in literature have inspired this exhibition. And we hope the flowing light, lines and shapes created by the 21 artists would transport the audience to a magic journey that blurs the line between reality and fantasy, between memories and imagination.
Many artworks of the exhibition display the flowing and shifting of light, and the light not only changes over time, but over different spaces as well. In “Gravity and Grace”, Shinji OHMAKI has created an installation artwork that transport us into a world of shifting lights and shadows, where an illumination of how small us humans are would lead us to a new appreciation of life and its gifts. Juin SHIEH has also worked with light in her “Crumpled Memory IV”. Opposite to OHMAKI’s dazzling art, light is much more contained in SHIEH’s installation piece. She’s crumpled and reshaped her draft paper and display their rich tones and content – a reflection of the inner thoughts and feelings of women. These two artworks will be placed at glass wall of the new gallery, constantly shining their light and welcoming our guests.
Besides the installation artworks, many paintings have also shown a variety of interpretations on the changing light, shadows, time and space. In her 2019 painting “Involuntary Landscape”, Nona GARCIA has imbued her frame with modern consciousness and eastern philosophy. She has managed to create an oil painting that’s akin to the wrapped up environmental installations of Christo & Jeanne-Claude while implicitly hinting at the passing of time in landscape. The artist has breathed new life in the medium with her fresh perspective and techniques. Other painters have also broken new grounds in their own ways: YANG Shih-Chih restructures eastern aesthetics in her paintings with collage, a distinctly western technique, whereas WU Yiming adopts cinematic compositions and deep, multilayered black in the background to revolutionize the language of ink brush painting. Rao FU, a Chinese painter residing in Germany, has fused his cultural background with German Expressionism and Romanticism to create paintings address cross-cultural topics with distinctly mixed visual signatures. Sculptor YU Ji has employed atypical materials and techniques to create her “Flesh in Stone” series, which consists of a series of statues that fuses the imagery of the western “torso” and the eastern Buddha.
The large-scale installation art pieces stimulate our imagination of flowing light with shifting visual elements. In “Duino Elegies”, JIA Aili places an apparatus which displays the transformation from solid to liquid and gas alongside an image of Vladimir Lenin to express a romantic sentiment on idealism and revolution. Filipino artist Buen CALUBAYAN expresses similar sentiments in “Pasyon and Revolution”, an installation work in which he crafts a hammock with the pages from the book of the same title. The artist focuses on the key terms in the book, such as “revolution”, “decolonization” and “enlightenment”, and has created an artwork that exhibits characteristics of sculptures, concept and performance art. CALUBAYAN’s art challenges our positions in written history and provokes revision on the historical failures of utopianism and reflections on the trauma of our colonial past. In “Pen Walking #171”, SHI Jin-hua portrays a seascape with gleaming waves with pencil sketches, whereas Belgian artist Rinus VAN De VELDE has produced “Law number 127: If any one“ ”point a finger” ”at a sister…”, a dynamic sketch of abstract expressionist Joan Mitchell working on her painting. Adding to the collection of works is Taiwanese female artist LEE Jo-mei’s new artwork “Landscape Remain 08”. Together, the artworks forms a multi-dimensional conversation on the development of aesthetics which leads us to a swirling realm where space, light and shadows intertwine.
