Opening：2015.4.25  14:30

Carefree Living – Drawings & Prints by Wei Jane CHIR

Carefree Living – Drawings & Prints by Wei Jane CHIR is an individual exhibition by the Taiwanese artist Wei Jane Chir. After living outside Taiwan for many years, she is giving an exhibition at the Chini Gallery. The three series of work exhibited embody the artist’s life experience and shifts in spiritual aims in different artistic forms. In the Imagining Emptiness Series, Wei planned to produce a copperplate engraving through photography, corrosion and etching. Expressing the artist’s forceful intention to explore – exploring the possibility of kneading Western and Eastern aesthetics together through choice of medium. The Vermont Winter Journey Series feature ordered straight lines being used to construct an abstract aesthetic vocabulary, expressing the artist’s internal feelings towards Germany in condensed form in a rational way. The Mendocino Series is the artist’s latest creation, in which ink which has been exposed like a photograph is used to construct the artist’s internal landscape, a response to the minuteness and humility the individual feels in nature. In copperplate engraving, ink painting and pencil sketches alike, Wei displays an inseparable Eastern sentiment through her own reflections on creation and life which cannot be faked. Honesty still remains the heart’s guiding light, and such a light is the root of all calm.

Artist Statement

Carefree Living is an artist looking back on the paper works left by three distinct periods of her life, the last of which, the Mendocino Series, is the latest and is depicted using lead. The Mountain Series and Landscape Life Series use lead sketches to depict life.

Before completing this series, I had been working in photography for 10 years, but it was the first time I returned to brush and lead creation. This work differed from previous work in that I wished to use the canvas to express the emotions and mood of some individuals, “a state in which one has something to say – creation is still a kind of need”, like the Kuriyagawa Hakuson observed the art and literature are symbols of frustration.

These works were created when the artist was in the landscape, breathing nature in, narrating the coming and going of the tides, serving as an artist (at least that is what people call me), sharing this period of devotion with people. It’s a little like those ancient poets who wrote paeans to the scenery of the mountains and rivers; but within a more cinematic breakdown, into the near, mid-distant and distant scenes. This is connected to the work I did in photography over the years, actually, the three most commonly-used camera shots: near, mid-distance and far. This is a rule I have seemingly formulated through the process of creation. When I was young, I was full of ambition and enthusiasm, and studied in other countries, desiring to display the superior qualities of Eastern art in my work. When incorporating the characteristics of other cultures, there are many conflicts and complex connections which are difficult to clarify.

Later, I became involved with Falun Gong due to injury, and practiced Falun Gong for ten years: art was no longer my only spiritual release, yet it was an inseparable part of my life.

After a chance occurrence, I used ink and lead rather than a great deal of oil paint and tempera. Saying that I chose these materials would not be as accurate as saying I chose to use them in my work. But the first piece I created was like meeting a long-lost friend. The lead used in art today ranges from H to F to 2B to 8B… far from having only five colors, they contain endless lessons to be learned.

Sketching has always been the most fundamental of mediums in Western art, and it is no coincidence that the neo-classical French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres said, “Drawing is the integrity of art.” He means that within art, drawing cannot be forged, but directly displays the artist’s skill, thought and state of mind. I believe that this is also the definition of sketching in the West: “any work on paper is called a sketch, including color paintings”. I draw no distinctions between different media, and one day I will return to working in oil painting; when matters come to a head, this is also an opportunity to which Carefree Living gave rise.