Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Transforming spacial concepts into natural forms

I have just been to Taipei.  The main purpose of the trip was to visit Art Taipei that was just being held over the weekend, but I also found Taipei Fine Arts Museum very good. 

Because it is the city's municipal museum, you can enjoy 4 to 5 exhibitions for a mere 1 US dollar (NTD30) admission fee, and each exhibition is good.  Interestingly one of the exhibitions was "Trans-Cool Tokyo," which featured many of the most major contemporary artists of Japan.  Indeed it is a very efficient opportunity to have a quick overview of the contemporary art scene in Japan, and you would never see such a show in Tokyo.   So if you are interested in the Japanese contemporary art and happened to be in Taiwan, it is a must see.  It is open until September 25, 2011.

I was more impressed by the retrospective of Read Lee, "The Struggle of Space and Sentiment."  I did not know about the artist until I saw the show, but I was just fascinated by the colors and brush strokes of his abstract paintings.  Many of the works looked soothing to me, having no conflict, so to say.  And I believe that must have been what the artist struggled to achieve.

Lee said "In my paintings, I transform spacial concepts into natural forms."  On the other hand, according to Lee, Cezanne transformed natural forms into painterly space.