Taiwanese artist Wu Chi-tsung(吳季璁)'s solo exhibition jing-atmospheres《境》takes place at the Sean Kelly Gallery in New York from Nov. 5 to Dec. 18 to present his Cyano-Collage series 《氰山集》as well as representative videos, installation works that integrate Western and Eastern aesthetics.
“I really hope this journey, one that has been full of trial and error in finding a way out, can inspire more young artists to go out to find opportunities, to see this big world,” Wu told Artnet News on a video call. Wu Chi-Tsung: jing-atmospheres is artist's first solo exhibition in the United States. He becomes the first Taiwanese artist of his generation to have a solo exhibition in New York.
Wu Chi-Tsung was trained from an early age in the traditions of Chinese calligraphy, Chinese ink painting, watercolor, and drawing, and worked in these time-honored idioms for many years. While those practices still inform his process, his current work seeks to understand how media and technology are manipulated to represent our relationship to the world. In the main gallery, there are new iterations of his Cyano-Collage series, in which he connects Eastern and Western culture and art to integrate traditional aesthetics within a striking contemporary language. His Cyano-Collages replace the traditional ink and brush used in Chinese shan shui paintings (山水畫) –literally, “mountain-water-pictures”—with experimental photography to reinvigorate the traditional landscape language. To create these stunning images, he prepares hundreds of cyanotype photographic papers—Xuan paper (宣紙) treated with a photosensitive coating—that are crumpled, exposed to sunlight, and then mounted onto aluminum, creating a spectrum of tonalities. The results are collaged images that resemble the mountainous landscapes often found in Chinese shan shui paintings, but which are produced using completely a contemporary process.
The Sean Kelly Gallery, established in 1991, is located near Hudson Yards in West Manhattan. The main gallery displays Wu's series work of Cyano-Collage, of which two pieces are especially designed for spacious gallery space, serving as the highlights of the exhibition.
Still Life (小品之十四－黃梅) series that translates motifs of traditional cut-branch flower painting into time-based moving images is also presented in the main gallery, featuring traditional paintings of flowers and birds to communicate his nostalgia for painting, as it retraces the emotions and memories that have slowly disappeared in life. Installation artworks such as "Wire (鐵絲網)" and "Dust (灰塵)" are presented in the front and lower gallery.
Wu, Chi-Tsung was born in 1981 in Taipei. Wu received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Taipei National University of the Arts in 2004. He currently lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan and Berlin, Germany. His work, in which he devotes great attention to the methods used in producing and interpreting images, spans across different media, including photography, video, installation art, painting and set design. He combines traditions and contemporary art forms from the East and the West. Daily objects and phenomena are great inspiration for his work, what he transforms into poetic imagery. He received the top prize of the “Taipei Arts Award” (2003), the “WRO Media Art Biannual” (2013) – Award of Critics and Editors of Art Magazines”, the “Liu Kuo Sung Ink Art Award” (2019), short-listed for the “Artes Mundi” (2006), and the “Prudential Eye Awards” (2015).
Wu Chi-Tsung jing-atmospheres
November 5 – December 18, 2021
Sean Kellery Gallery
475 Tenth Avenue
New York, NY 10018
Tuesday - Friday: 11AM - 6PM
Saturday: 10AM - 6PM
(Photo courtesy of Wu Chi-tsung Studio)