IN FLUX
acrylic, chalk on canvas, 2026-2025
A Becoming Perceptual Map
My work begins with movement.
Over the years, I have crossed cities, countries, and continents, carrying with me fragments of places, encounters, memories, and emotions. These experiences do not remain fixed in my mind as geographical coordinates. Instead, they gradually transform into perceptual landscapes—fluid territories shaped by memory, sensation, and imagination.
The series In Flux emerged from this continuous state of becoming. It reflects my attempt to map not physical locations, but the invisible processes through which identity is formed and transformed. The lines, networks, and organic structures that appear throughout these works do not describe a specific place. Rather, they trace movements of thought, emotional currents, and the shifting relationships between self and environment.
As I travel, I become increasingly aware that belonging is never static. It is something that evolves through encounters, displacements, and exchanges. Every city leaves an imprint upon me, just as I leave traces of myself within the places I inhabit. These mutual transformations create an ever-expanding cartography that is neither entirely personal nor entirely collective.
In In Flux, maps cease to function as tools of orientation. They become living organisms. Boundaries dissolve, pathways multiply, and spatial structures behave like growing networks of roots, veins, or neural connections. The city, the body, and the landscape begin to merge into a single dynamic system.
Through this series, I seek to visualize the subtle movements that shape our perception of the world. Memory is not fixed; identity is not singular; place is never fully stable. Everything exists in a state of continuous transformation.
In Flux is therefore not a map of where I have been. It is a map of becoming—a perceptual landscape that continues to unfold as I move through the world.
acrylic, chalk on canvas, 2026-2025
A Becoming Perceptual Map
My work begins with movement.
Over the years, I have crossed cities, countries, and continents, carrying with me fragments of places, encounters, memories, and emotions. These experiences do not remain fixed in my mind as geographical coordinates. Instead, they gradually transform into perceptual landscapes—fluid territories shaped by memory, sensation, and imagination.
The series In Flux emerged from this continuous state of becoming. It reflects my attempt to map not physical locations, but the invisible processes through which identity is formed and transformed. The lines, networks, and organic structures that appear throughout these works do not describe a specific place. Rather, they trace movements of thought, emotional currents, and the shifting relationships between self and environment.
As I travel, I become increasingly aware that belonging is never static. It is something that evolves through encounters, displacements, and exchanges. Every city leaves an imprint upon me, just as I leave traces of myself within the places I inhabit. These mutual transformations create an ever-expanding cartography that is neither entirely personal nor entirely collective.
In In Flux, maps cease to function as tools of orientation. They become living organisms. Boundaries dissolve, pathways multiply, and spatial structures behave like growing networks of roots, veins, or neural connections. The city, the body, and the landscape begin to merge into a single dynamic system.
Through this series, I seek to visualize the subtle movements that shape our perception of the world. Memory is not fixed; identity is not singular; place is never fully stable. Everything exists in a state of continuous transformation.
In Flux is therefore not a map of where I have been. It is a map of becoming—a perceptual landscape that continues to unfold as I move through the world.
Personal Structures, Venice Art Biennial, Palazzo Mora, ECC-Italy, 2026
Solo Exhibition "Taipei I Paris" at the FOCUS Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery, London, 2025
FOCUS Art Fair
Saatchi Gallery London
16–19 October, 2025
Mei-Tsen Chen: Fluid Structures
Jenny LEE
curator and Taiwan representative for Art Basel
Taiwanese artist Mei-Tsen Chen presents two interrelated series — In Flux (2025) and Paradise (2012–2017) — that explore the intersections of memory, identity, and place. Her work transforms the familiar structures of maps and architectural plans into lyrical meditations on belonging, mobility, and transformation.
Born in Taipei to an architect father, Chen grew up surrounded by blueprints and drafting tools — a visual language that later became integral to her artistic vocabulary. Now based in Paris, she carries these early imprints into a practice that bridges East and West, precision and emotion. Across her canvases, lines act not as boundaries but as living traces of thought and movement, charting both inner and external landscapes. Her compositions unfold in the liminal space between reality and memory, where physical geographies and emotional cartographies intertwine. Because her work is situated between these two dimensions, it reveals an artist who draws nutrients from the diverse cultures in which she has immersed herself — reflecting on her roots while continually moving forward.
Her monumental five-panel painting In Flux unfolds like a cartographic tapestry rendered in deep indigo. Layers of acrylic and chalk generate subtle tonal variations, while flowing white lines traverse the surface with rhythmic momentum. These lines recall rivers that shift course, roots that intertwine beneath the soil, or constellations that drift through the night sky. Their motion suggests not control but surrender — an openness to change and impermanence. As light catches the chalky surface, the work reveals a quiet depth, where structure and spontaneity coexist in delicate balance.
In dialogue with this new work, the Paradise series reimagines urban grids of London (LHR), New York (JFK), and Shanghai (SHA). Painted in a special hues of red tones, these compositions pulse with a visceral energy. Each map, stripped of legibility, becomes a breathing organism of lines, arteries, and cells. The painterly surface oscillates between abstraction and cartography, blurring the distinction between geography and the body. Through the repetition of mapping and un-mapping, Chen transforms cityscapes into living archives of memory and migration.
Together, In Flux and Paradise reveal Chen’s notion of “constructive nomadism” — an idea shaped by decades of living between cultures. For her, the act of moving across geographies becomes a creative strategy rather than a rupture; displacement becomes a space of construction, not loss. Each mark on the canvas is both a record of movement and a gesture of renewal.
Chen’s work invites viewers to reconsider how we locate ourselves in a constantly shifting world. Her lines, at once architectural and organic, trace the fragile boundaries between permanence and transience, order and emotion, reality and memory. In these layered surfaces, the viewer may find fluidity in shifting positions — the quiet negotiation between where we come from and where we are becoming.
Saatchi Gallery London
16–19 October, 2025
Mei-Tsen Chen: Fluid Structures
Jenny LEE
curator and Taiwan representative for Art Basel
Taiwanese artist Mei-Tsen Chen presents two interrelated series — In Flux (2025) and Paradise (2012–2017) — that explore the intersections of memory, identity, and place. Her work transforms the familiar structures of maps and architectural plans into lyrical meditations on belonging, mobility, and transformation.
Born in Taipei to an architect father, Chen grew up surrounded by blueprints and drafting tools — a visual language that later became integral to her artistic vocabulary. Now based in Paris, she carries these early imprints into a practice that bridges East and West, precision and emotion. Across her canvases, lines act not as boundaries but as living traces of thought and movement, charting both inner and external landscapes. Her compositions unfold in the liminal space between reality and memory, where physical geographies and emotional cartographies intertwine. Because her work is situated between these two dimensions, it reveals an artist who draws nutrients from the diverse cultures in which she has immersed herself — reflecting on her roots while continually moving forward.
Her monumental five-panel painting In Flux unfolds like a cartographic tapestry rendered in deep indigo. Layers of acrylic and chalk generate subtle tonal variations, while flowing white lines traverse the surface with rhythmic momentum. These lines recall rivers that shift course, roots that intertwine beneath the soil, or constellations that drift through the night sky. Their motion suggests not control but surrender — an openness to change and impermanence. As light catches the chalky surface, the work reveals a quiet depth, where structure and spontaneity coexist in delicate balance.
In dialogue with this new work, the Paradise series reimagines urban grids of London (LHR), New York (JFK), and Shanghai (SHA). Painted in a special hues of red tones, these compositions pulse with a visceral energy. Each map, stripped of legibility, becomes a breathing organism of lines, arteries, and cells. The painterly surface oscillates between abstraction and cartography, blurring the distinction between geography and the body. Through the repetition of mapping and un-mapping, Chen transforms cityscapes into living archives of memory and migration.
Together, In Flux and Paradise reveal Chen’s notion of “constructive nomadism” — an idea shaped by decades of living between cultures. For her, the act of moving across geographies becomes a creative strategy rather than a rupture; displacement becomes a space of construction, not loss. Each mark on the canvas is both a record of movement and a gesture of renewal.
Chen’s work invites viewers to reconsider how we locate ourselves in a constantly shifting world. Her lines, at once architectural and organic, trace the fragile boundaries between permanence and transience, order and emotion, reality and memory. In these layered surfaces, the viewer may find fluidity in shifting positions — the quiet negotiation between where we come from and where we are becoming.