Looking at the unearthly poetic and spiritual touch of Guillaume Hebert’s work in such collections as Sea Etude, Suite for Shadows on the Sea, Rocks from Other Hills, and Apocalypse, and weighing and considering about the philosophical thinking and the production course behind his creations, I cannot help but think of the pioneer in German romantics-the poet Friedrich Hölderlin. It has long been noted by Hölderlin that, with the constant expansion of capitalization and industrial civilization, the human spirit has been lost, and that mechanical technology and utilitarian pragmatism have taken the human race away from the original cradle of the soul to the realms of coldness and strangeness. In the reflection of how French Revolution eventually descended to blood and fire, the poet realized that the rationality upheld in the Enlightenment was not the highest principle, and that what transcended knowledge and rationality should still be a true understanding of the origin of life and life itself, the fulfillment of life in its struggle, the unity of subject and object, and the synchronization of the son of God and the son of Man. And as far as Hölderlin is concerned, only the experience of beauty and the divine belief in love can lead us to this unity: As long as friendliness and purity dwell in our hearts, We may measure ourselves not unfavorably with the divine. Is God unknown? Is he manifest as the sky? This I tend to...
As a child, China haunted me. It was a mysterious country, a part of the world that I had discovered through watching the adventures of Tintin and how fascinated my mother was with Chinese culture. It was the first trip my parents made in the 1980s. I would spend hours looking at the photos they had taken, the flyers that had brought back and the colourful tickets that gave access to the museums and temples they visited. Throughout my childhood, I dreamt to escape to China, up until I went there for the first time 1999. I would return many times thereafter, for personal and artistic projects because China and especially Shanghai became more than just an exotic destination, it became one of my main sources of inspiration. The works presented at M Art Center are the result of days spent surveying and painting in the streets of one of the last working-class neighborhoods in central Shanghai. It is a testimony of my love for this traditional culture that has gradually submerged under the glass, concrete towers and the new temples of consumerism. My way of repopulating these old alleyways of laughter and imagination that the children of Shanghai used as playgrounds. This exhibition represents my dream of China, intimately linked to childhood and a universal need to escape in a world that is increasingly incomprehensible. -Seth
Unconsciously, my paintings have circled around the same topic for ten years. Giorgio Morandi, whose artistic life is covered by duplicate themes, fascinates me. Repetition is a powerful tool in itself as it refers to a very slow process that one has to experience, during which time, structure, reflection and emotion are all represented. The question which I have been asked most frequently over the course of the past ten years is: Why do I keep painting grass? Mark Rothko illustrates what is desperation by merely several layers in bright colors. He tells us a tragedy without any narrative element on his canvas. Similarly, my first painting of grass was created during the most painful period in my life. By contrast to Rothko, I prefer to use dark colors for the whole piece and flourish it with precise and complicated strokes, which gives the picture the beauty of vitality but also twists and loneliness. I draw more than just grass. The repeated specific topic of grass finally traces to the view of my inside world. One day, I came to understand the common destiny of all creatures on earth, including myself, through my sadness. Those helpless and inevitable pains in life become so sublime, beautiful and poignant that they cannot be summarized using words. When I look back on the rearranged pictures, I see that there were determination and energy which transcend the twists and the loneliness. That is light...
“The LORD God built the rib, which He had taken from the man, into a woman. Then He brought her to the man. Then the man said, ‘this one, is bone of my bones...’” － Genesis I believe that the beauty of bones is not just a fascination to me, but one that has amazed lots of people once in a time. Around my four or five, I cleaned and dried several pork ribs after a meal, to make them toy blocks as the toy walnuts in those adults’ hands. In my fourth grade in the primary school, a human skull was unexpectedly unearthed when I, with my companions, were digging a hole to roast sweet potatoes. My friends got shocked, but just after a second, they started to play with the bones like footballs. I tried to stop them because I wanted to keep these bones for my own. Finally, they still decided to hand it over to the school, which much disappointed me. I grew up with collections of the bones of different animals such as birds, mice, chickens, dogs, cows, sheep, pigs, deer, horses and shells. And I even found the fossil scraps of the bones and teeth of a giant lizard and hadrosaur during my trip in Erlianhot, Inner Mongolia. In my eyes, the bone is one of the most beautiful things in the material world. Bones are the main substantial components constituting vertebrates which help...
Although the wind is too free to be grasped, we are still questioning where it’s coming and where it’s heading. Once we believe that the universe is created upon some profound laws, the closer we approach them, the more we can interpret about the diverse world. M Art Center is honored to announce The Invisible Laws, a group exhibition presented by Dawei Dong, Jingfang Hao & Lingjie Wang and Jie Ren. The involved artists reflect on different topics through a similar path that is to follow and represent the laws of creation, during which something new is born and brings about extra inspirations and a welcome relief to the artists. THE INVISIBLE LAWS Critical Review: Can Cui The wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. Psalm 103:15-16 Wind can be felt on flags, willows and hands stuck out the window, however, can never be caught. We persist on seeking the direction of the wind as studying the law of the world which is concealed occasionally while revealed in other cases. Those with more sensitive perception and more serious obsession probably have an even greater chance to approach the truth. The art pieces in this exhibition reflect on different perspectives of the theme and it is intriguing that the three involved artists (group) are coincidentally chasing after the wind through some rules, phenomena and characteristics in their individual manners. Certaines âmes vont à...
M Art Center is honored to announce Rifts in Silence, the group exhibition of WU Ding, ZHANG Lian and ZHAO Qian, presenting various forms of art pieces including installations, videos and paintings, etc. The exhibition will be opened on May 26th, 2018 and remain on view through June 25th. The three artists encounter in this exhibition and together respond to the subject of time from their individual backgrounds and contexts, giving an insight into the overlooked rifts in the silent system of time. INTRO The reason why the past can extend to the present is because of the future of certain objects. WU Ding Neither can we control twisted time nor the direction and speed of flow. ZHANG Lian I came back to the same place time after time to encounter what I saw before. ZHAO Qian ——WU Ding In WU Ding’s video work, The Reason Why the Past can Extend to the Present is Because of the Future of Certain Objects, an illuminated object lied on the beach is being flooded by tides. In people’s traditional notion, time is regarded as a linear and evenly forward flow which is constructed by the past, the present and the future. Differently in WU Ding’s theory, the future and the past juxtapose with the present so that the past never passes and the future always comes around. The artist has made diverse experiments on this theory in his works. God Never Roll...
M Art Center is honored to present Rocks from Other Hills, the solo exhibition of French artist Guillaume Hebert. The exhibition will be opened on March 10, 2018 and remain on view through April 21, 2018. Rocks from Other Hills marks M Art Center’s first collaboration with Guillaume Hebert and also the artist’s first show in China. Guillaume Hebert was born in Normandy, France and graduated from Ecole Supérieure d'Arts & Médias of Caen. He has been based both in Taipei and Paris since 2012. Rocks from Other Hills —— Poetic rumination of the nature and humanity by French photographer Guillaume Hebert Article：Stanley Fung Guillaume Hebert always creates images precisely, delicately and thoughtfully. And his every series comes out with high quality and perfection. Through the camera scope, Hebert sometimes focuses on the city corner to reveal the imbalance of rapid modernization and backward situation in Asia, and at some other time, the intriguing scene of guests dosing in Taipei Starbucks and Shanghai IKEA also attracts his attention. After that, Hebert tries to compose still life and portrait images with his collection of plastic and nonwoven bags. And not the last, he gazes at the Pacific and Huangpu River where the peaceful breeze interchanges with violent waves, and describes the impressive outline of the magnificent rocks standing by the seashore of Ludao and Lanyu… This abundant creation not only conveys Hebert’s feelings about today’s culture of industrialization and urbanization, burdenless...
The human body is the subject that I give all my passion to. I consider it my lifelong vocation to explore and visualize the human figure as a living soul. When I study them, the visual interplay between muscles and bones and sinews directly activates the most sensitive and purest place in my heart. In these artworks, the inner spirit represents itself in the movement of strokes, which vividly captures the inner activity that happens subconsciously in me. In other words, my art sketches the soul. If this is a God-given sensibility and creativity, more or less, then it motivates me to observe every delicate sensation in every human experience, and to try to bring comfort for the pains of life and the homesickness for the garden of Eden.
To Philip Mantofa, artistic creation is more than the creation of artwork; it is a reverent act of worship and a renewal of strength and peace. Every piece of art that he creates is a full and exhaustive expression from his heart, and an outpouring of his compassion for people. In 2015, Mantofa's debut worldwide exhibition Visions from Above captured and conveyed insights and revelations from above. Now in 2017, through Mantofa's art, we once again have a fresh look into his heart - The heART of Worship.
Night is situated at the dark side of objects. Light gazes inexhaustibly at all objects. On the other side of objects, which cannot be pierced out by light, they respond to themselves with night and shadow. Each object is followed by its own shadow, facing each other, in every moment of the dark night. As the reverse side of the visible, they submerge themselves in vast quiescence and mystery. We will display the works of Qingwen Bai, Lijie Tan and Ding Wu, all of which are produced in the previous year, in the exhibition scene of M Art Center. Qingwen Bai’s film The Extended Journey, depicting a hiking trip of young lovers, presents a discussion into the materiality of love and vague Utopia model established by desire. Essence of things always looms, like onions exfoliated layer by layer. Lijie Tan’s full-length film Off World, inspired by Mike Davis’s ‘Planet of Slums’, is based on observation to residential areas of the rich, present reflections to ‘a suspended moment’, as well as human history. Ding Wu’s work circling around the question of ‘Known and Unknown’, seeks for surface features concealed under ‘inner order’. Exploration into actuality and Utopia, fiction and reality, poverty and wealth, as well as representation and inherence are handled and embodied in the three artists’ works, making things even more complex and obscure, at the same time offering extensive interpretations under presentations which are unpenetrable. Underneath the shadow, objects...
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