ZHANG An, LIN Yen Wei: ART TAIPEI 2021

ZHANG An is currently pursuing his PhD at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing where he did his undergraduate and graduate studies from 2010 to 2018. ZHANG An's paintings are characterized by rigorous composition, yet his delicate brushstrokes and lyrical colors bestow them with lively warmth. Even when he is depicting ruins, there are thousands of traces of mindful love hidden under his brush. He faithfully documents through his paintings the seemingly unreal landscapes that actually exist, as well as campuses and residential buildings that bear traces of human life in the process of urbanization. As China strides towards a more modern future, ZHANG continues to use his attentive caring eyes to capture the scenes in transition, the special landscapes during the pandemic, and the lives of ordinary people in the changing times like time-lapse photography.

LIN Yen Wei is best known for his recreations of objects found in public places that are painted by amateur painters through an integration of photography and painting. “Just Like the Way You Are” and “Plaything Study” two series are Lin’s portrayals of cement animal sculptures and plastic toy animals, which he captured by the camera, then depicted on the canvas to show their bulgy eyes, weathered bodies and protruding lines running down the center of their faces in extreme details. “Although the image in the painting is flat, the illusion effect hidden in it is more realistic than the sculpture, because it allows you to feel the color, texture and temperature of the object in the painting, as if it fills the space and fills the entire world." Lin's works are portraits (about life) and still life (about death) all at the same time, and since they drift in the ambiguous zone between photography and painting, his subjects transcend from being mere forms to mediators between experience and the outer world. In this way, Lin Yen Wei not only conveys nostalgia, lingering memories from childhood and the social and cultural context of the subjects, but also reveal a certain spirituality, or "a kind of spiritual consciousness that shines through my imitations of beings," said the artist. With his work, Lin proposes an amalgamated artistic language to engender a discourse on multiple levels.

LIU Xiaodong, Hiroyuki MATSUURA, Benrei HUANG, Jimmy LIAO