Solid Art 2nd Anniversary Exhibition
16 February - 26 March 2022
Since its establishment in the summer of 2019, Solid art has held eleven exhibitions in a two-year period, after deducting the pause of the pandemic and relocation. This special exhibition is launched on the occasion of the Chinese New Year in 2022. Most of the works on display are selected from the gallery’s collections built through past exhibitions. It brings together twelve artists, including nine from Taiwan and three international. The medium spans from painting, sculpture, photography, installation and video. Among them are established artists who are well-known, active in domestic and foreign institutions and recognized by awards, and emerging artists who debuted in commercial galleries for the first time.
This selection is a periodic review of our highly topical and socially engaging curatorial exhibitions, including site-specific works and special commissions, encouraging experimental and ground-breaking works that respond to contemporary society, resonating deeply with Solid Art’s attention to environment, ecology, body, gender, and local history.
By presenting this anniversary show we would like to reflect this epoch fairly, to propose a slice of hybrid reality, aspiring forward thinking, alternative ways of life, inclusive and fluid worldviews with unknowability and possibilities, to face the privilege and dilemma of art, to firmly support and promote continuously the artistic creation that is authentic and of the highest quality.
This selection is a periodic review of our highly topical and socially engaging curatorial exhibitions, including site-specific works and special commissions, encouraging experimental and ground-breaking works that respond to contemporary society, resonating deeply with Solid Art’s attention to environment, ecology, body, gender, and local history.
By presenting this anniversary show we would like to reflect this epoch fairly, to propose a slice of hybrid reality, aspiring forward thinking, alternative ways of life, inclusive and fluid worldviews with unknowability and possibilities, to face the privilege and dilemma of art, to firmly support and promote continuously the artistic creation that is authentic and of the highest quality.
Philipp KREMER
Philipp KREMER (born 1981 in Duisburg, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. He studied at the University of the Arts in Berlin with Georg Baselitz (2000-2004) and was resident at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam (2011-2012).In 2013 he won the Royal Dutch Painting Award. In 2014 he was grantedthe support of the Mondriaan Fund (Scholarship Established Artist).
“The Gathering s are far more ideal and anarchistic, everyone is free, equal and satisfied. All the figures are naked and trusting each other, everyone is having sex in the way they want to, nobody is forced. In that sense they are the most happy paintings I made.”
-Philipp KREMER
“The crying I see as a moment where you loose or give up control, a kind of ecstatic condition. It might happen that, when you are in a difficult time and you decide to stop whatever you are doing and take a pause to let your mind flow, the truth kicks in and you cry. This moment shows you something about yourself. Painting is like that as well, you can’t hide from yourself.”
-Philipp KREMER
Elina BROTHERUS
Elina BROTHERUS lives and works in Helsinki, Finland and Avallon, France. She has an MA degree in Photography from the University of Art and Design Helsinki (now Aalto University) and an MSc in Chemistry from the University of Helsinki. She started exhibiting internationally in 1997. Her works are in public collections including the Pompidou Centre, Paris, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Saatchi Collection, London and MAXXI, Rome, to name a few.She has been awarded, among others, Carte blanche PMU, France, in 2017, the Finnish State Prize for Photography in 2008, and the Prix Niépce in 2005.
“I wanted to see what happens to me, because the ‘me’ is my tool; it’s a sign in my visual vocabulary, so if it changes, I want to be able to see that change.”
-Elina BROTHERUS
Elina BROTHERUS works in photography and moving images. Her work has been alternating between autobiographical and art-historical approaches. Photographs dealing with the human figure and the landscape, the relation of the artist and the model, and gave way to images on subjective experiences in her bodies. In addition to the series of works from the “Annunciation” , Solid Art 2nd Anniversary Exhibition also features two classic photographic works for the first time : “Artists at Work 3”, which explores the artist’s gaze, the power relationship of viewing, and self-portrait ; “Sebald’s hotel 4” is the scene described in the book by German writer W. G. Sebald. Between the inner and outer landscapes, BROTHERUS traces back the family, life and her artistic creation process.
WANG Pei-Hsuang
Pei-Hsuan WANG (b. 1987) holds a BA from Macalester College, MN, USA, and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, MI, USA.Wang has exhibited work at Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Hong-Gah Museum (Taipei), and the National Gallery of Indonesia (Jakarta), among others. Recent residency programs include the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York, the Asia Culture Center (ACC) (Gwangju), and the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Wang was winner of the Special Jury Prize for Sanya Youth Award 2019 in China, finalist for the Taipei Arts Award 2016, and has shown at the Taiwan International Video Art Biennale, Jakarta Contemporary Ceramics Biennale, and the 18th Asian Art Biennale in Bangladesh.
In her recent body of work, WANG contemplates her relationship with her Taiwanese American niece Iris in sculpture scenarios. By constructing and appropriating forms that embody the idea of exoticism, creating (self) portraitures of Iris that are suggestive of origin myths, and assembling an array of power objects in order, she thinks about the sense of fetishization and impurity (hybridity) often experienced alongside a multi-racial upbringing, and reflects on a deep desire to be an authentic, desired cultural hybrid herself, becoming Iris’s shadow or doppelgänger.
SHIU Sheng-Hung
SHIU Sheng-Hung has been applying his artistic concept to painting as well as other media. “Disappearance” and “temporality” have always been the cores of SHIU’s practice. He has held solo exhibitions or participated in group exhibitions in Taipei, Hong Kong, Japan and Basel in Switzerland. His works have been exhibited in major exhibitions, including TOKYO FRONTLINE (2011), Taiwan Biennial by the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (2012), Kaohsiung Awards (2014), Taipei Arts Awards (2015), Art Central and VOLTA 14 (2018).
From the viewpoint of the history of painting and landscape art, SHIU Sheng-Hung engages himself in the exploration of mineral pigments through both classical and contemporary painting techniques; accordingly, Shiu’s paintings consist primarily of scattered fragments of colors so as to manifest his interwoven perspective on time and materiality.
His new series called ‘The Glacial Landscape’ is to be showcased at the gallery, depicting the contemporary landscape in the Anthropocene with patterns that signify archaic deposits; also, with the layering of paints, it reflects the underlying interrelated dynamics of human activities, nature, economic expansion, and technological development.
In comparison with the visual and physical experiences of exotic glacier tours in Switzerland and Iceland, the mountains forests and plants in Taiwan that SHIU is drawn to visit were also the chosen subject matter. By focusing on the identity issue arising from the biogeographic history of Taiwan, he seeks to develop a more diverse and inclusive point of view based on multiple clues and time perspectives, thereby defining the interrelationship between the self and the world.
“In SHIU’s paintings, by using pigments of different textures and hues, he manages to apply the concept of stratification in seed germination to the layering of paints; as never before, the loose brushstrokes and smooth color shifts enable him to create unity in his art —— showing an organic spatial feature expressed by the arrangement of colors and images on canvas, as well as a sense of wholeness reflected through the layered brushstrokes that are well incorporated into the depiction of collagelike images.”
-CHEN Hsi
CHIU Chen-Hung
CHIU Chen-Hung was born in 1983 in Taiwan. In 2008, he completed the graduate program in plastic arts at National Taiwan University of Arts. CHIU’s notable solo exhibitions include Phototaxis at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin, 2019), The Dust of Time at YIRI ARTS (Taipei, 2017), and A Deer of Nine Colors at Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (Taipei, 2015). Group exhibitions include Asian Art Biennial-The Strangers from beyond the Mountain and the Sea,National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts(Taichung, 2019), Island Tales: Taiwan and Australia, Taipei Fine Arts Museum(Taipei,2019), The Hidden South at DaWu Waterfront Park (Taitung, 2018), Shattered Sanctity at Museum of Contemporary Art (Taipei, 2017), Taiwan Biennial: The Possibility of an Island at National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (Taichung, 2016), Greater Taipei Biennial of Contemporary Arts: De-coincidence at National Taiwan University of Arts (Taipei, 2016), Rencontres Internationales at La Gaîté lyrique, France, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, and Reina Sofia National Museum (Madrid, 2015), Liverpool Biennial City-States at LJMU Copperas Hills (Liverpool, 2012), THAITAI: A measure of Understanding (Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, 2012).
CHIU Chen-Hung’s work “Daylighting” is a series of new works made in response to the space on the second floor of the gallery, of which concept is derived from the old military fortifications scattered throughout Taiwan. Accordingly, this work portrays the window views from fortifications and the shadows of plants by carving their silhouettes on a board made of concrete and minerals while the Mikania Micrantha, a commonly seen species of invasive alien weeds, is placed on the shelf-like “Plant Stands”. Hence, the vigorously growing plants interwoven with the trailing shadows stemming from the fringe of history have formed a new kind of perceptual experience as well as connection between time and place; also, the visual presentation and spatial arrangement of the displaying works mirror CHIU’s intention to reconstruct the boundaries that appear to be antagonistic in the first place as he copes with the catastrophic challenges and ever-changing worlds.
YEH Chu-Sheng
YEH Chu-Sheng was born in Kaohsiung in 1946, and first graduated from the art department of National Taiwan University of Arts, then the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, Spain in 1977. Yeh’s work was exhibited in National History Museum of Taiwan, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Japan The Ueno Royal Museum, Shanghai Art Museum and National Art Museum of China. His works were collected by Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts.
“YEH Chu-sheng repeatedly asserts that painting must connect with everyday life. By observing various phenomena in life, painting can serve as a medium to document every aspect of life. For the artist, the contents and even styles of his creations must be consistent with his life philosophy. One must observe, contemplate, and manage related techniques and elements to establish a lengthy and complicated incubating process to master painting.”
– CHUANG Wei-Tzu
( Installation shot of “2012；2021：Yeh Chu-Sheng Solo Exhibition”, Solid Art, 2021 )
“By allowing the painting to reflect upon itself and let the material do the talk, artworks serve the creator’s monologue and the interaction between the creator and materials, space, and the surroundings. When YEH focuses on the observation and practices of the ‘current circumstances’ and the close relationship with his surroundings, problematique once bothered art historians and philosophers such as ‘How does painting do the talking?’ ‘How does art serve as a mode of thought?’ may no longer be unsolvable. Also, it may not be necessary to count on concrete narratives and statements to describe nature and the environment, personal feelings and emotions, or even the future destiny of painting and art. Once the artist has sufficient confidence in his work, clues to those questions may only exist in the works. ”
-HSU Chu-Chun
KAO Ya-Ting
KAO Ya-Ting. Born in Taipei, M.F.A of Taipei National University of the Arts. Now works and lives in Taipei. KAO uses different ways to draw down the imagined map of her religious belief and historical identity, looks for personal connections to the times, and presents her work in paintings, videos, sounds and installations. In recent works she uses found images, press photos, and home photos, along with drawing, to frame up the uncertainty of self-identity. Her recent solo exhibitions ‘The Imitation Of Faith’ and ‘Dorothy Crash’ both received Tai-Hsin Art Award nomination. She received Asian Artist Scholarship of Vermont Studio Center U.S in 2012, and was chosen for M.I.T project in ART TAIPEI art fair in 2011. She is also the funding member of artist studio ‘Polymer’.
“Creating, to me, is a belief. Not only does it reflect life, but means to tackle problems with imagination.”
-KAO Ya-Ting
LIN Yi-Chun
LIN is a contemporary artist living and working in Taipei, Taiwan. In 2016, she completed her MFA degree in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London.Her research and interests include the production of materials in relation to memory, the spatiality of time, duration and process in space, and the relationship between object and documentation. LIN received the Judge’s Award in Taipei Awards in 2015 and has participated in several national and international group exhibitions and AIR programs in Okinawa, Tokyo, Taipei and London.
“In fact, the term ‘burning stone’ refers to the literal meaning of the word ‘sulfur’, and LIN adeptly uses it as a metaphor for human body in the said work. Under this context, we are able to understand how LIN’s other work, Burning Stone series, deals with the same theme in a more playful way that is close to everyday life. She has created a unique ambience in the exhibition venue where the spa decor of a massage studio was incorporated into the display; also, Lin had cross-referenced the texts among the Small Sea Travel Diaries (Diary of Sulfur Mining), Dan-Xin Archives, Diary of Castle Zeelandia, and other contemporary essay collections so as to deduce/piece together the ‘map’ of the senses of the human body, different shades of perception and various viewpoints.”
-Nobuo TAKAMORI
Josefina NELIMARKKA
Josefina NELIMARKKA is an interdisciplinary artist working between Helsinki and London. She was born in 1982 in Helsinki, Finland and graduated M.A from the Royal College of Art in London and M.F.A from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. She was the artist-in-residence at SPACE Art + Technology in London, UK and climate research station SMEAR II, in Finland.
“In this sense, the ‘paintings’ by NELIMARKKA are neither manually made by the artist in order to depict the ideal scenes nor created by applying paints to a solid surface; instead, she utilizes different kinds of printing and shaping technology in contemporary society as her brushes. Also, in the course of her researches in geology and astronomy, NELIMARKKA never stops thinking about the nuanced view seen through the eyes of a scientist and those of an artist, thereby transforming her findings into artistic practices. “
-CHEN Hsi
WANG Yi-Ting
WANG Yi-Ting holds a MFA from Marseille-Méditerranean College of Art and Design in France (DNSEP). She has won the Taipei Fine Arts Award 2019 (selected) and the 2017 Tainan New Arts Award. WANG explores the essence of all life in nature and probes the movement and conversion of energy between natural and man-made objects. Using natural media as a carrier of time and applying forms by transforming it into “dessin-espace”.
In 2019, the site specific work “Sweet Potato” was exhibited at the “Edible”, it completely reverses the relationship between such subject (human) and object (crop), gently and eloquently returns the life of the domesticated plant and its natural growth posture.。
“For me, the work ‘Sweet Potato’ brings back to Taiwan the most fundamental original intention of creating in the French period. This work presents the most authentic appearance between me and organic matter. With the development of my creation in the past two years after returning to Taiwan, I have been thinking about how to stay true to its original concept and grow and take care of it together. After the work “Sweet Potato/Record 2019″, I put the idea of rhythm on the sweet potato in my solo exhibition ‘Impromptu’ (2020), from a single expression to a combination of their respective forms, becoming a short multi-part appearance.”
-WANG Yi-Ting
LO Yi-Chun
LO Yi-Chun creates sculpture, photographs and installations about environmental change and farmland issues. She works on the theme of Taiwanese tobacco,Banana peel, bagasse industry with fieldwork, documentation and literature, trying to derive the historical context of Taiwanese industrial landscape under the global economic system.
LO Yi-Chun, who has been paying attention to the current environment, society and economic situation for a long time, uses the sun-dried banana skins as the material for “Taste of Ocean” series to depict the portraits of migrant workers who come across the sea. The bittersweet of their life is just like this ordinary but nourishing fruit, being soft and firm against the impact of the wave of globalization.
“LO attempts to further extend the heavy labour required for growing cash crops in the past to correspond with the present-day leisure activity and physical exercise. Therefore, with the intention of using the differences between the two activity-induced physical strength as a metaphor for the changes in economic activities, LO creates ‘Molasses, Ethanol, Fitness Workshops, Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Life So Different, So Appealing? (Fitness Program-3)’, which was displayed in an ambiguous form resembling an agricultural tool as well as a fitness equipment so as to highlight the transition in the physical work done by humans after the said changes occurred.”
-Nobuo TAKAMORI
lololol
lololol is a boundless laughter, an endless extension of lol (laugh out loud), an acronym that appears to be constructed by the building blocks of I-Ching and/or computer code. Founded by Xia Lin and Sheryl Cheung in 2013, the artist collective focuses on how emotions and body politics are informed by diverse technology cultures, with special interest in martial arts and Tao-informed philosophies. Their scope of technological interests ranges from ancient knowledge of martial arts, medicine to all kinds of contemporary inventions. “Future Tao” is the group’s ongoing initiative to engage with Taoist mind and body practices as an alternative approach to technological exploration.
” ‘Cultivating Breath’ is an encrypted file composed of various breathing sounds. 66 sources of breathing vibrations including: earthlings, computer mimics, MEMEs and primates. When the pandemic began in 2020, the human activity interface turned to rely on the virtual world, seeking to establish a universal way to regulate the symbiotic relationship between the inner and outer space of the network.”
-lololol
