Dec. 11, 2009 ? March 7, 2010
Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts
200 South Madison Street, Wilmington, DE 19801
(302) 6566466
www.thedcca.org
Exhibition content : Hong-Wen Lin?s installation artistic work, sculptures and oil on canvas
Hong-Wen Lin is an artist whose practice is deeply rooted in the history and traditions of Taiwan. His paintings and sculptures express both classic and contemporary notions of purity, as his art pursues a delicate path between timeless forms and innovative aesthetics.
He is a fundamentally Taiwanese artist, yet his work still embodies qualities that have universal appeal. As curator Dr. Robert C. Morgan notes in his catalogue essay, the Zeninspired, shamanistic paintings, sculptures, and installations of Hong-wen Lin reveal the intensity of an artist whose forms are as precise and accurate as they are mysterious and divergent. Regardless of what medium or materials he uses, there is a persistent connection that pulls the forms together. The connections are, perhaps, more hidden than they are obvious. The latent force within these sculptures and paintings ? which the ancient Chinese understood as the qi ? is a vital energy that inhabits natural and constructed
forms, including those derived from and through Hong-wen's art. His forms reveal a hidden structure, an underlying current that flows between the various constituent parts. Whether they exist in two or three dimensions, or represent figures or abstract ideas, is less important than their ability to reveal internal energies.
The persistent qi in Hong-wen's work is not only a signifier of something else, but an actual presence of his own journey through time; his ability to inhale and exert force when necessary, and to exhale and relax when necessary. As with all journeys on Earth made by human beings, the rhythm of the energy is knowing when and how to exert and how and when to relax, otherwise little of consequence will happen. This is the important message of the artist Hong-wen Lin. And his art presents a special indigenous perspective to American audiences.