Medium of Reified Immediacies

9/5 (Sat) - 10/17/2020 (Sat)

Lin Hong-Wen

Researcher: Peini Beatrice HSIEH
Opening reception: 2020.09.05 (Sat.) 15.00
Exhibition dates: 2020.09.05-2020.10.17 (Tue.-Sat.,10.30-18.30)
Exhibition venue: Double Square Gallery

“My work conveys the state of the moment when it is finalized and presented.” ––LIN Hong-Wen

Double Square Gallery is pleased to present Lin Hong-Wen’s solo exhibition, Medium of Reified Immediacies, which runs from September 5 to October 17, 2020. With his mastery of the abstract vocabulary, Lin employs diverse media such as painting, sculpture and environmental installation to transform his observation of the environment, perception of history and accumulated memories into visual expressions while communicating his care to the cultural, social and ecological environment. The exhibition marks Lin’s first collaboration with Double Square Gallery, for which the gallery has specially invited art critic Peini Beatrice HSIEH to be the academic researcher of the exhibition. Featuring more than twenty sets of artworks, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to comprehensively explore Lin’s multifaceted artistic journey. In addition to showcasing a fine selection of abstract paintings and metal sculptures created over the course of past three years, the first-floor space continues the “Light Year Project,” a collaboration between the gallery and Samsung, to present a newly created environmental installation, Peering into the Mind, utilizing Samsung’s flat screens to perfectly represent natural temporalities unfolded through tree branches in nature.

The exhibition title, Medium of Reified Immediacies, is inspired by the artist’s creative process of capturing inner perception stimulated by the external world. Lin’s work stems from his gaze into the present state of life. Departing from perceptions and impressions, the artist uses indefinite forms and spontaneous lines and colors to create ingeniously constructed images and forms. It is like what the artist has stated, “As all things stretch endlessly along the axis of time, a mental cipher emerges from the grafting of the perceptive mind onto the conundrum of information and knowledge.”

Lin’s work does not use definite symbolism or concrete delineation. His abstract painting originates from his direct experience of nature, from which fleeting thoughts are captured with intuitive and spontaneous brushstrokes and colors that are in a bold, fine, thin and fluid manner. His surging thoughts are also converted into a different dimension with iron sculpture. The physical labor of slowly welding iron plates together balances the inner rhythm in painting. He preserves the unadorned qualities of iron, leaving it to gradually oxidize, combining refined imageries and vocabularies of mental image to portray his perceptions collected in the everyday life and observations of the natural environment. In addition to abstract painting and sculpture, the artist has extended his creative practice to environmental installation. He uses bamboo planks from typhoon-damaged oyster farms on the southwestern coast as well as driftwood as his main material, ingeniously incorporating them into his video installation to raise awareness of the environment and prompt observation and reflection of the current world and ecosystem. Regarding Lin’s expression of feelings and perceptions with visual forms, Peini Beatrice HSIEH stated, “Lin’s abstract painting is lyrical and poetic; his welded sculpture converts scraps into wonders; his landscape installation is as natural as nature can be; his writing conveys everlasting elegance; and his photography unites the visible and the invisible. These works are interrelated and mutually referencing, yet they can be appreciated respectively at the same time.”