- Tseng Guan-Shiung｜Portrait of a Woman in the Wilderness
- 2024｜07.27 - 08.31
- Lin & Lin Gallery
Lin & Lin Gallery is pleased to present Tseng Guan-Shiung's first solo exhibition Portrait of a Woman in the Wilderness in July. The title of this exhibition, “Wilderness (ερημιά)” is taken from a biblical term which describes a field of helplessness and panic. Tseng Guan-Shiung emphasizes the woman’s portrait in the wilderness through the image of a woman standing in the darkness, as well as the depiction of lush plants and the composition, to symbolize people who are extremely depressed and lonely in today’s world of mechanically repetitive work patterns and precision computing, demonstrating the artist's emotion and epiphany of life.
“In the realm, the sky is dark and the stage is depressing, but what really cause anxiety is the 'unknown'.”
—— Tseng Guan-Shiung
“Gentle women in darkness” and “lush green nature” are common elements in Tseng's artwork. Through the composition and arrangement of objects, the beautifully posed and grave-looking women is surrounding by the leaves of much larger plants in the deep black environment to show the tiny size of the figure. Meanwhile, in the contrast of light and shadow, the bright colors of flowers draw the audience’s attention to the center of the screen, and the figure’s position becomes the only bright spot, creating a bizarre, weird, but dramatic tension in the aesthetics of the screen.
The works in this exhibition, which superficially appear to depict the women in elegant and delicately nature scenes, in fact reflect the pursuit of smoothness and kitsch in contemporary society. The artist removes the unnecessary and imperfect from these elements and presents them on the well-constructed stage, but the woman in the painting becomes a depressed and lonely individual on the stage of social aesthetics, as if in a “Wilderness”, the audience is made to project themselves onto the figures and realize that in pursuing socially defined values, we would be like these figures, turning into animals that exploit ourselves and others.
Tseng Guan-Shiung, born in Taipei, Taiwan, 1987, graduated from the Department of Fine Arts, Chinese Culture University, and is still studying at the Department of Fine Arts, Taipei National University of Arts. The artist's main subject are realistic figures, and he has won many awards, including the Golden Award of National Art Exhibition R.O.C., 2022., the Prize for Excellence of Union Bank Art Exhibition, 2022; the Judges' List Award of Kaohsiung Award, 2020; on the listed one of the 3th Beijing overseas Chinese Arts Awards, 2016; the Prize for Excellence of National Large-sized Oil Paintings Exhibition, 2014. In the following exhibitions he participated: 2023, Julia Gallery Art Exhibition, Tainan Art Museum, Tainan, Taiwan; 2022, 2020 Kaohsiung Award, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung, Taiwan; 2016, 2016 New Wave Painting Exhibition, Carrie Chang Fine Arts Center, New Taipei City, Taiwan; 2015, Hong-gah Museum Art Exhibition, Hong-gah Museum, Taipei, Taiwan; 2015, Chinese Culture University Art Exhibition, Hwa Kang Museum, Taipei, Taiwan; 2014, Keelung Art Exhibition, Keelung Cultural Center, Keelung, Taiwan. His work is in collections of museums and private foundations such as Keelung City Cultural Affairs Bureau, Union Bank, Kuo Mu Sheng Foundation and so on.
