5/15 Sun
15：00-16：30 Opening Lecture
Suling WANG x Daniel PULMAN x Fangwei CHANG

16：30 Opening

Suling WANG (b. 1963, Taichung, Taiwan) and Daniel PULMAN (b. 1975, Manchester, UK) met at the Royal College of Art in London, UK. Having toured many cities and rural regions, they have been inspired by many places while carrying with them the memories of their respective histories. These experiences have led them to co-create their latest exhibition, Mountain Language. The exhibition title refers to the one-act play written by the playwright Harold Pinter, which Wang and Pulman watched together many years ago when they lived in London. The impact which Wang felt after watching the play has persisted for many years, and has become the inspiration of this duo exhibition centering on painterliness.

Having traveled from Taichung’s Qingshui to London in the UK, Wang has again returned to her hometown in Taichung, where she has remained since 2020 due to the global pandemic. Over the years, she has conveyed her contemplation on the interconnections between personal experiences and external sceneries through painting. To the artist, the formation of abstract painting is incorporated with life experiences which defy descriptions of words. Standing in front of the flat canvas, the artist reflects repeatedly on personal encounters, transforming them into sensory experiences visible to the eye. The new body of work on view in this exhibition is informed by abstract vocabularies newly formulated by Wang. In the paintings, “light” delineated with light ink shines through the crevices of large brushstrokes vividly charged with momentum, enriching the artist’s well-executed and iconic painting of “complex space.” [1]

From Manchester to Qingshui, Pulman has realized, in the modern 21st-century, a personal “grand tour,” an idea popular in the 18th-century Europe, and has transformed himself into a contemporary flâneur traversing through distant, aloof cultural relations. His latest painting series, The Bathers of Guguan, is inspired by a trip exploring Taichung’s mountains two years ago, during which he encountered a group of bathers swimming in and resting on Dajia River. Using the unique technique of impasto painting to express the material tension of paint, the concrete images of rural landscape are transformed by the abstract color blocks to create the effect of defamiliarization. Visualizing Pulman’s artistic gaze and careful delineation, The Bathers of Guguan immerses the audience in the splendid natural scenery constructed with the artist’s mastery of paint.

[1] Chang, Fang-Wei. “The becoming of dual/multiple complexities.” 2018