TAIPEI, Taiwan -
April 17, 2020 -
PRLog -- Looking back to his self-taught process: perhaps the knowledge of "visual color mixing" was learned from studying art catalogs with additional practices. Wu Hsichi's first exhibition in 1998 showcased "Pointillism Series", although it did not entirely follow pointillism's principles, one was able to clearly see the mysterious process of forming a plane from a dot fascinated him. But he gave up the Pointillism style and switched to abstract painting with composition since he was afraid to be seen as a "Seurat follower". Beginning from 2002, he turned to abstraction lyrique and conducted a large number of tests with mediums and techniques. These early artworks, rather than to be treated as self-generated, they are some kind of game of imitation and mediums, or catharsis of abstract expressionism.
To appreciate the artworks completed after 2016, they broke out from the cage of "self-taught"
and entered a transformed world of "self-generation"
. It is a posture of unconfined nor forced: he chose crayon which is rarely used by artists. An interesting note is that in those smaller realistic paintings are full of lines which he interpreted as "constraints";
it accidentally reveals his desire of breaking out from those constraints. After 4 years of quenching, his unique crayon arts began to shine a vivid personality:
thorough and exhausting study on mediums, glamourous and fashionable color setup, overwhelming line structures, rustic and innocent shaping games, a variety of view angles, uneven size of casual ratios, all combined together to construct a fantasy land that is out of the world and yet down to earth. "Islands from the Above" seems to be a weightless city in the sky, it is like an unknown realm but also like a familiar theme (especially the constant reappearing Guishan Island)? Unlike the "Silent Landscape" before, people and objects occupy a rather large area of space in the picture. They are part of the landscape's composition, but also like outsiders jumped out from the scenery, are they human or god? Mushroom-shaped or spore-shaped plants, and animals such as birds bring us toward nature where is full of primal power. But window frames symbolizing car windows, architectures in a small manuscript, and flying machines all bring us back to a city where is full of technology.
It is exactly when he breaks out from the inner and outer constraints and realizes art is no more than the daily life. Wu Hsichi presents self-generated and great creativity. He enters a transformed world with a care-free posture to cleverly and smoothly merge objects which contend with each other. It is an attempt to break away from the cliché of the art circle and presents a whole new sensation to us.
https://www.artsy.net/show/powen-gallery-islands-from-the-above
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