2022 - Kuo Wei-Kuo

Lin & Lin Gallery is pleased to present the solo exhibition "Kuo Wei-Kuo" in May, presenting the latest works of the artist. His art is inspired by himself, touching the inner and outer spirit and perception. He uses comprehensive painting skills to express a unique artistic language with stream-of-consciousness form. The themes and subjects of his works are highly recognizable, yet he does not stick to the media of painting, and is able to perpetually create different looks. Each work seems to be a revelation of the transient truths in fragile tranquility, which is the artist's fondness for life and the gesture of affirming everything comes to him.
 

In his new works, Kuo skillfully transformed memories, fragments of feelings, or emotional experiences in real life, and combined his understanding of classical painting to reorganize different graphic elements in the picture. Ultimately, these elements, either figurative or abstract, were developed into an image fantasy.

"The theme of this series is a metaphor of my own emotion and desire for painted images, which contain the sum of artistic, living, political, social, and personal ideologies, and the pursuit of the ultimate value of creation." —Kuo Wei-Kuo

The various media used in the works, as well as the texture that emerges through the process of repeated painting, scraping, and splashing are like the traces of the past time or old scars, stacked and peeled on the surface of painting with a poetic appearance. Than in the spatial attribute of alienation, the apocalypse-like pallor and loneliness were depicted in a somewhat indifferent manner.

As for Kuo, painting is a process of inner sorting and observation, more over is close to an instinctive belief. When re-analyzing and re-questioning his works, "emotional consciousness" becomes the theme of paintings. The endless wandering in a series of self-revelation, bloomed flesh and vessels, suspended hearts, floating characters, tadpole-like tissues, mutilated limbs, even the fragments from previous works, etc., all seem to be connected to this long creative process, and continue to tell the story of himself, whispering on and on.

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Kuo Wei-Kuo, born in Taipei, 1960, graduated from M.F.A of Taipei National University of the Art, Taipei, Taiwan. He co-founded the Taipei Painting School in 1985 and since then he has participated actively in Taiwan’s modern art movement. In 1994 and 1996, his works were shown in the Biennale at Taipei Fine Arts Museum. In 1998, Kuo co-founded the Hantoo Art Group and was the first chairman. His works had been exhibited in New York, Paris, Kyoto, Fukuoka, Seoul, Gwangji, Beijing and Chongqing, and he had also held solo exhibition at Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Today Art Museum, Beijing, and Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei. His works have received international attention and support and have been collected by several important art institutions in Taiwan, such as Taipei Fine Arts Museum, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Hong-Gah Museum, Dimension Endowment of Arts, Catcher Educational Foundation, and Kuo Mu Sheng Foundation. Kuo was awarded the eighth Modern Painting Award from Li Zhongsheng Foundation in 2004. In 2005, he was awarded the fifth Liao Chi-Chun Fund of Taipei Culture Foundation.

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Artist Statement｜圖像的意識流動, 2022