Author:

Size:Length:180 x Width:90 (cm)

Size description：198x115x3(含框)

Introduction：Chen Ping-hung (1966–) was born in Taipei. He graduated from the Department of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy at National Taiwan University of Arts, received a master's degree from Fontbonne University (USA), and holds a doctorate from the National Taiwan University of Arts Department of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, where he serves as associate professor. His works have received the Nan-ying Award, Golden Dragon Award, and Kaohsiung Award (conferring permanent exemption from juried entry) in the Chinese painting category, as well as the Wu San-lien Award for Art; he has also held solo exhibitions at the Tainan City Bureau of Cultural Affairs and Kaohsiung City Bureau of Cultural Affairs.

Chen excels in ink figure painting, through which he engages with the social and cultural landscape of Taiwan. In the 1970s, in the midst of Taiwan's diplomatic and socio-political difficulties, the Nativist Realism movement arose; artists returned to an engagement with the land and the humanistic tradition, actively drawing on local cultural materials. Taiwanese ink painting was influenced by this movement as well, and many artists—such as Shiy De-jinn, Yuan Chin-ta, and Chiang Ming-hsien—devoted themselves to gathering subject matter related to local humanistic history and culture. During this period, the Taiwan Provincial Fine Arts Exhibition and various officially sponsored fine arts exhibitions also encouraged this kind of nativist realist subject matter.

This work was created at the invitation of the "Glimpses of Democracy: Group Exhibition of 100 Taiwan Artists," and presents a multilayered scene in a central hanging scroll format. In the foreground, a bewildered, naked young child kneels in a sea of lily flowers, with large adult torsos faintly visible on either side, framed by arch-like blocks of color. The wild lily holds great significance for Taiwanese society: it represents enduring vitality, and is also the symbol of the democratic movement of the 1990s. Through the figure of the child, the artist evokes Taiwan's ambiguous international situation and its not-yet-fully-matured democratic process, even the sense of falling into isolated helplessness while the surrounding powers look on with the cold indifference of strangers. Yet the wild lilies growing everywhere quietly reveal the artist's hope for a new energized generation in Taiwan—one that will, pursuing the goal of democratic development, find its own place in the world.

Accession Number:PT09783200

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