When Lin Wan-shih (林萬士) was studying art at Goldsmiths, University of London, his tutor Michael Craig-Martin, a respected conceptual artist who influenced young British artists such as Damien Hirst, offered him some advice.
“He told me to keep doing my own work and keep my identity. He said ... ‘you are Taiwanese. That’s your culture, your background,’” Lin, 46, said.
With NIHILOGRAPHY — From Time, Space and Memory (形境書寫), an exhibition of 20 paintings and installation at Mot Arts, Lin follows Craig-Martin’s advice in a show that ponders the scenes and textures of Taiwan’s seascapes while employing a visual style that is meditative in its execution.
Saying Good-bye to Cambridge (再別康橋), an installation finished in 1996, sets the tone and contains many of the elements (rock, water, calligraphy) and themes (travel, home) found in Lin’s later work.
The title comes from a poem written by Cambridge-educated Chinese poet Xu Zhimo (徐志摩), whose experiences in the UK profoundly influenced his ideas about poetry.
A long white plank sits horizontally 61cm above the gallery floor. Rocks from the Thames are evenly spaced along the surface and are connected by a thin path of Chinese characters, cut into squares from a book of Xu’s poetry, that lead up to the frame of a house at the plank’s edge. A mound of Chinese characters lies below.
The surface represents the flowing process of creativity and each rock is a stepping-stone along the path of Lin’s journey to artistic self-discovery. The pile of characters on the floor suggests that artistic enterprise has been discarded at the end of the journey.
Arranged on the canvas in tableaus reminiscent of a Zen rock garden, Lin’s paintings are a series of impressions that offer a highly personal exploration of place, executed in a style that appears drawn from Chinese landscape painting.
“I go somewhere and soak in its beauty. I then return to my studio and try to recreate the feeling of what I remember of the place on the canvas,” Lin said.
In Memories of the Hometown (記憶之鄉), a meditation on Turtle Island (龜山島), Yilan County, which faces Toucheng (頭城), where Lin resides, the island’s landmass appears in the upper part of the canvas with a broad expanse of choppy sea below. Although the waves ebb and flow, the landmass is fixed, and is perhaps an emblem of how Lin’s hometown remains anchored in his memory.
Four Perspectives of Turtle Island (?t山島之四個面向) is a series of paintings that examine different aspects of the same memory. The waves in each canvas — one features thick swaths of gunmetal gray gently flowing with flecks of white, while another shows tempestuous waves before a storm — are suggestive of human emotions and how they influence the recollection of memories.
Other paintings, more abstract though still representational, include Mood (心境), which shows a series of rock formations jutting out of a calm gray body of water, and a thin scarf of white coiling around the center of the canvas.
Within the Chinese painting tradition, calligraphy often appears on the scroll to underline or expand on the artist’s inner temperament. Lin does the same and peppers most of his canvases with two-character phrases drawn from poetry to underscore the painting’s meaning.
For this reviewer, the Chinese characters are a distraction, a disjunction in the overall meditative flow of his compositions, which should be felt and not intellectualized.
In addition to the natural beauty of Taiwan’s landscape, Lin said that the inspiration for these works resulted from the recent deaths of his parents. Paradoxically, Lin’s great personal loss brought forth an outpouring of tranquility.
“Life for many people is chaotic. But for me I think I want to try to look at life in a different way and you can see this in my painting. Very simple, very peaceful,” he said.
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