PARADISE
oil painting on canvas, 2017-2012
The cities I have traveled through and inhabited constitute an organic cocoon in constant transformation, evolving both physically and mentally like a vast rhizomatic system. In this series, vascular trees extend their branching forms across city maps, intertwining with urban networks like delicate webs. These vegetal structures suggest flows of movement, exchange, and connection, animated by nourishing currents of vital energy. Rendered in shades of beige, red, and purple, they evoke the anatomy of a living organism, where nervous and vascular systems merge into a cartography of interconnected growth, memory, and becoming.
oil painting on canvas, 2017-2012
The cities I have traveled through and inhabited constitute an organic cocoon in constant transformation, evolving both physically and mentally like a vast rhizomatic system. In this series, vascular trees extend their branching forms across city maps, intertwining with urban networks like delicate webs. These vegetal structures suggest flows of movement, exchange, and connection, animated by nourishing currents of vital energy. Rendered in shades of beige, red, and purple, they evoke the anatomy of a living organism, where nervous and vascular systems merge into a cartography of interconnected growth, memory, and becoming.
Solo Exhibition "Paradise" as part of Personal Structures, Venice Art Biennial, Palazzo Bembo, ECC-Italy, 2024
https://personalstructures.com/ecc-awards-2024/
https://personalstructures.com/ecc-awards-2024/
Solo Exhibition "Arbres Vasculaires en Métamorphose" at Atelier CMT, Paris, France, 2021
Barclays Victor Hugo, Paris, France, 2015 / Cachan Biennial, France, 2018 / Barclays George V, Paris, France, 2015
Solo Exhibition "Reinvented Earthly Paradise - Between Taipei and Paris" at Galerie Grand Siècle, Taipei, Taiwan, 2014
Personal Structures, Venice Art Biennial Catalogue
European Cultural Centre Italy
April - November, 2024
Chen Mei-Tsen
European Cultural Centre Italy
April - November, 2024
Chen Mei-Tsen
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Le Prisme Magazine
Avril 2016
Mei-Tsen Chen, figure de l'artiste nomade
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Personal Structures, Venice Art Biennial Catalogue
European Cultural Centre Italy
April - November, 2024
PARADISE
Marc Williams DEBONO
chercheur en neurosciences, poète et essayiste
Paradise nous fait d’emblée pénétrer dans l’architecture intime d’un voyage – réel et imaginaire – que CHEN Mei-Tsen entreprend depuis toujours à la recherche de sa propre identité.
Ce qui frappe, c’est la perspective, l’atmosphère foncièrement carminée émanant des toiles, puis soudain l’éclaté du plan architectural. À chaque fois qu’on traverse une toile, un plan, un paysage, on entend les murmures incessants de marchés imaginaires, d’artères embouteillées, de la foule en liesse. On devine la présence de remparts, de cours d’eau ou de digues, et ailleurs, celle enchevêtrée de buildings s’enchainant l’un dans l’autre. Ces cités qu’elle traverse sans cesse sont comme des mirages : hautes silhouettes de murailles aperçues au loin, qui peu à peu se précisent, jusqu’à devenir tangibles et se cartographier au sein des branches d’un arbre-monde rougeoyant et sylvestre à la fois.
À chaque arrêt devant la toile écarlate se reforme un dédale épousant sans discontinuité les trajets tortueux de racines et ramifications nerveuses ou végétales qui parcourent de façon haletante le paradis sur Terre que l’artiste nous convie à explorer. On est pris dans la toile, dans ce « cocon organique » – à la fois empreinte et matrice – qui a le pouvoir de délimiter les artères pulsantes de plans de ville suspendus abritant en leur sein la maison natale de l’artiste, et à l’autre bout, une forêt luxuriante et tentaculaire aux tons rouges, irisés ou violacés qui circulent dans nos veines et envahissent tout l’espace.
À travers ce rouge sang inondant la cité, infiltrant la sève des arbres, et par-delà nos propres corps comme médusés face à la toile, Mei-Tsen nous dit l’espoir de celle qui n’a de cesse de tisser des liens à travers les cultures et le désarroi de la proie prise au piège de la géographie de la toile.
Personal Structures, Venice Art Biennial Catalogue
European Cultural Centre Italy
April - November, 2024
PARADISE
Marc Williams DEBONO
neuroscientist, poet and essayist
Paradise immediately takes us into the intimate architecture of a journey – real and imaginary – that CHEN Mei-Tsen has always undertaken in search of his own identity.
What strikes you is the perspective, the deep crimson atmosphere emanating from the canvases, and then suddenly the splintering of the architectural plan. Every time we cross a canvas, a plane, or a landscape, we hear the incessant murmurings of imaginary markets, jammed arteries, and jubilant crowds. You can make out the presence of ramparts, waterways, or dykes, and elsewhere, the tangled web of buildings, one inside the other. The cities she passes through again and again are like mirages: tall silhouettes of walls glimpsed in the distance, gradually taking shape until they become tangible and are mapped out within the branches of a world-tree that is both glowing and sylvan.
Each time we stop in front of the scarlet canvas, a maze forms again, seamlessly following the tortuous paths of roots and nerve or plant branches that breathlessly run through the paradise on Earth that the artist invites us to explore. We are caught up in the canvas, in this 'organic cocoon' – at once an imprint and a matrix – which has the power to delineate the pulsating arteries of suspended city plans that house the artist's birthplace, and at the other end, a luxuriant, sprawling forest of red, iridescent, or purplish tones that flow through our veins and invade the whole space.
Through this blood-red flooding the city, infiltrating the sap of the trees, and beyond our own bodies as if transfixed by the canvas, Mei-Tsen tells us of the hope of the woman who never ceases to weave links across cultures, and the dismay of the prey trapped in the geography of the web.
European Cultural Centre Italy
April - November, 2024
PARADISE
Marc Williams DEBONO
chercheur en neurosciences, poète et essayiste
Paradise nous fait d’emblée pénétrer dans l’architecture intime d’un voyage – réel et imaginaire – que CHEN Mei-Tsen entreprend depuis toujours à la recherche de sa propre identité.
Ce qui frappe, c’est la perspective, l’atmosphère foncièrement carminée émanant des toiles, puis soudain l’éclaté du plan architectural. À chaque fois qu’on traverse une toile, un plan, un paysage, on entend les murmures incessants de marchés imaginaires, d’artères embouteillées, de la foule en liesse. On devine la présence de remparts, de cours d’eau ou de digues, et ailleurs, celle enchevêtrée de buildings s’enchainant l’un dans l’autre. Ces cités qu’elle traverse sans cesse sont comme des mirages : hautes silhouettes de murailles aperçues au loin, qui peu à peu se précisent, jusqu’à devenir tangibles et se cartographier au sein des branches d’un arbre-monde rougeoyant et sylvestre à la fois.
À chaque arrêt devant la toile écarlate se reforme un dédale épousant sans discontinuité les trajets tortueux de racines et ramifications nerveuses ou végétales qui parcourent de façon haletante le paradis sur Terre que l’artiste nous convie à explorer. On est pris dans la toile, dans ce « cocon organique » – à la fois empreinte et matrice – qui a le pouvoir de délimiter les artères pulsantes de plans de ville suspendus abritant en leur sein la maison natale de l’artiste, et à l’autre bout, une forêt luxuriante et tentaculaire aux tons rouges, irisés ou violacés qui circulent dans nos veines et envahissent tout l’espace.
À travers ce rouge sang inondant la cité, infiltrant la sève des arbres, et par-delà nos propres corps comme médusés face à la toile, Mei-Tsen nous dit l’espoir de celle qui n’a de cesse de tisser des liens à travers les cultures et le désarroi de la proie prise au piège de la géographie de la toile.
Personal Structures, Venice Art Biennial Catalogue
European Cultural Centre Italy
April - November, 2024
PARADISE
Marc Williams DEBONO
neuroscientist, poet and essayist
Paradise immediately takes us into the intimate architecture of a journey – real and imaginary – that CHEN Mei-Tsen has always undertaken in search of his own identity.
What strikes you is the perspective, the deep crimson atmosphere emanating from the canvases, and then suddenly the splintering of the architectural plan. Every time we cross a canvas, a plane, or a landscape, we hear the incessant murmurings of imaginary markets, jammed arteries, and jubilant crowds. You can make out the presence of ramparts, waterways, or dykes, and elsewhere, the tangled web of buildings, one inside the other. The cities she passes through again and again are like mirages: tall silhouettes of walls glimpsed in the distance, gradually taking shape until they become tangible and are mapped out within the branches of a world-tree that is both glowing and sylvan.
Each time we stop in front of the scarlet canvas, a maze forms again, seamlessly following the tortuous paths of roots and nerve or plant branches that breathlessly run through the paradise on Earth that the artist invites us to explore. We are caught up in the canvas, in this 'organic cocoon' – at once an imprint and a matrix – which has the power to delineate the pulsating arteries of suspended city plans that house the artist's birthplace, and at the other end, a luxuriant, sprawling forest of red, iridescent, or purplish tones that flow through our veins and invade the whole space.
Through this blood-red flooding the city, infiltrating the sap of the trees, and beyond our own bodies as if transfixed by the canvas, Mei-Tsen tells us of the hope of the woman who never ceases to weave links across cultures, and the dismay of the prey trapped in the geography of the web.
Le Prisme Magazine
April, 2016
Mei-Tsen Chen, Figure of the Nomadic Artist
Taiwanese visual artist Mei-Tsen Chen is currently participating in the exhibition Intimate Transgressions, which was presented in New York in September 2015, in Beijing in October 2015, and in Hangzhou until April 16, 2016. The exhibition will next be shown in Taipei on October 25. Like this itinerant project, the artist’s own journey is rooted in a search for traces and points of reference shaped through exchange and encounter. Seeking answers to questions of origin—whether biological, cultural, or even vegetal—she embraces what she calls a constructive nomadism, in which lived experiences nourish the formation of a singular identity. Today, she opens the doors of her duplex studio in Paris, as well as those of her nomadic heart.
Far from adopting nomadism as a mere posture or simulation, Mei-Tsen embraces what she describes as the condition of an “urban nomad” in both her art and her life, pursuing a coherent and deeply personal path. Born in Taipei, Taiwan, in 1966, she graduated from the Taipei National University of the Arts in 1990. The daughter of an architect—a fact that would prove fundamental to her artistic development—she first experienced the impulse toward nomadism through a series of youthful escapes, often prompted by unresolved conflicts, particularly with her father. Yet she recalls one formative moment that would later resonate throughout her creative practice: “During the construction of a building, my father laid out several ceramic tiles that were being considered for the façade. For the first time, he asked for my opinion on an aesthetic decision.” Shortly afterward, he lost his life on the construction site.
While all of her brothers went on to become accomplished scientists, Mei-Tsen chose a path closer to that of her father by becoming an artist. The smell of ammonia used in diazo printing—the process employed to reproduce architectural blueprints—remains her own Proustian madeleine, an enduring trigger of memory. As a child, in a silent gesture of shared occupation, each absorbed in their own activity, she would draw on the reverse side of discarded blueprints while her father had worked on the front.
Eager to encounter greater forms of otherness, Mei-Tsen first discovered Paris at the age of twenty-one. Captivated by the city, she experienced the cultural shock she had long anticipated—an experience that would later inspire recurring themes throughout her work. “I wanted to live differently, through cultures other than my own. When I returned to Paris at the age of twenty-four, I decided to follow my own path. The city produced a profound aesthetic shock, perfectly in tune with my aspirations. Paradoxically, I felt as though I had already lived there. The books and magazines from Western countries that were available in Taipei had nurtured my openness to the world and broadened my imagination.”
Like her native city, shaped by successive periods of colonization and foreign influence, Mei-Tsen has drawn nourishment from a wide range of cultural traditions, which she continually reinterprets through the lens of art history and the institutions—particularly museums—that embody and preserve it. Growing up in Taiwan, where a distinct national cultural narrative remained difficult to define, she was immersed in Chinese history, taught primarily through the school curriculum, while also discovering the history of art—predominantly Western—through the books available at the Taipei Public Library. The knowledge she acquired through images and publications would later take on an entirely new dimension when she began traveling to the various countries that had, at one time or another, influenced Taiwan’s cultural development. She summarizes her childhood with a simple yet revealing phrase: “I grew up within an international environment.”
At a time when travel to mainland China was not permitted, she obtained a visa in France and set out on a two-week journey across the country, visiting several major cities. She recalls: “It allowed me to confront everything I had learned at school with my own experience of the mainland, in order to better understand my identity. I was incredibly excited—I had to retrace five thousand years of history in just two weeks!” Her journey began at the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor (Qin Shi Huang), near Xi’an in Shaanxi Province. She then travelled to Guilin, whose extraordinary karst mountains create one of the most celebrated landscapes in the country. Beijing proved to be another decisive stage of the journey, where she explored both the Forbidden City and the Great Wall of China.
The (re)discovery of China was not enough for Mei-Tsen Chen. She sought to push her boundaries even further. A multidisciplinary artist, she works across a wide range of media, including drawing, photography, installation, sculpture, and painting.
A true human mosaic, Mei-Tsen Chen embraces encounters with others as an essential part of her practice. Through exhibitions in countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, she engages in dialogue with visitors as well as with the artistic masters whose works she encounters in museums, seeking to understand how others perceive her own work. These exchanges also allow her to rediscover her own culture through the contrasts and perspectives they reveal. Constantly in motion, these physical and mental journeys have shaped an identity that closely echoes the concept of the radicant, developed by Nicolas Bourriaud in his book The Radicant (Denoël, 2009). In botanical terms, "a radicant plant is one that produces adventitious roots as it grows—such as ivy or the strawberry plant..." (Larousse). Transposed to the human condition, the concept describes an individual who establishes connections across diverse contexts and environments, continually adapting and taking root anew. Such an approach implies transcoding images, translating ideas, transplanting behaviors, and fostering exchange rather than imposing fixed models.
Her multilingual abilities further reinforce her nomadic approach. In addition to her native Chinese, she speaks two Chinese dialects, French, and English, and has some knowledge of Japanese. She vividly recalls her first meaningful encounter with the physical reality of modern and contemporary art at documenta in Kassel. Her travels subsequently took her through Munich, Cologne, and Berlin, before leading her to Italy, where Rome, Florence, and Venice revealed to her the splendors of Renaissance art. Singapore’s multiculturalism echoed that of Taipei, while Lisbon allowed her to retrace, in reverse, the maritime routes once followed by sailors departing from Belém on their way to Taiwan.
For the nomadic artist, territory is not defined as a piece of land enclosed by borders, but rather as a network of intersecting lines, pathways, and channels of communication that gradually form their own web—a personal mental map. Spatial and temporal networks merge with the organic networks of the human body and with vegetal structures. Like an elastic citizen of the world, she constructs her territory mentally, through the interweaving of signs, memories, and traces that continually lead her back to herself, often in striking contrast with her culture of origin. As she explains: “I am in a constant state of searching, a perpetual displacement. I live through movement; cultural shock is necessary for me to understand my life.”
For the artist, every journey is ultimately a confrontation with oneself, and the indispensable first step of any voyage remains the act of unfolding a map. “The first encounter with a city begins with its map. It is a visceral, mental, and emotional experience that I wanted to translate into my recent works.”
Her recent research brings together maps of different cities with the highly symbolic image of the Tree of Life. The recurring colors—red, violet, and beige—evoke the epidermis as well as the nervous and circulatory systems.
The liberation of the mind allows one to absorb other worlds and new cultural codes, confronting inherited perspectives with newly acquired ones. This is, in many ways, what Mei-Tsen Chen’s practice seeks to convey. Her insistence on movement reflects a growing dimension of contemporary art, in which an increasing number of nomadic projects anchor artistic practices within a globalized and interconnected world. Rooted in experiences of travel and mobility, where techniques evolve through encounters, diverse inspirations, and lived moments, contemporary creation gives rise to bodies of work shaped by constant transformation. Mei-Tsen Chen’s oeuvre stands as a compelling example of this dynamic.
April, 2016
Mei-Tsen Chen, Figure of the Nomadic Artist
Taiwanese visual artist Mei-Tsen Chen is currently participating in the exhibition Intimate Transgressions, which was presented in New York in September 2015, in Beijing in October 2015, and in Hangzhou until April 16, 2016. The exhibition will next be shown in Taipei on October 25. Like this itinerant project, the artist’s own journey is rooted in a search for traces and points of reference shaped through exchange and encounter. Seeking answers to questions of origin—whether biological, cultural, or even vegetal—she embraces what she calls a constructive nomadism, in which lived experiences nourish the formation of a singular identity. Today, she opens the doors of her duplex studio in Paris, as well as those of her nomadic heart.
Far from adopting nomadism as a mere posture or simulation, Mei-Tsen embraces what she describes as the condition of an “urban nomad” in both her art and her life, pursuing a coherent and deeply personal path. Born in Taipei, Taiwan, in 1966, she graduated from the Taipei National University of the Arts in 1990. The daughter of an architect—a fact that would prove fundamental to her artistic development—she first experienced the impulse toward nomadism through a series of youthful escapes, often prompted by unresolved conflicts, particularly with her father. Yet she recalls one formative moment that would later resonate throughout her creative practice: “During the construction of a building, my father laid out several ceramic tiles that were being considered for the façade. For the first time, he asked for my opinion on an aesthetic decision.” Shortly afterward, he lost his life on the construction site.
While all of her brothers went on to become accomplished scientists, Mei-Tsen chose a path closer to that of her father by becoming an artist. The smell of ammonia used in diazo printing—the process employed to reproduce architectural blueprints—remains her own Proustian madeleine, an enduring trigger of memory. As a child, in a silent gesture of shared occupation, each absorbed in their own activity, she would draw on the reverse side of discarded blueprints while her father had worked on the front.
Eager to encounter greater forms of otherness, Mei-Tsen first discovered Paris at the age of twenty-one. Captivated by the city, she experienced the cultural shock she had long anticipated—an experience that would later inspire recurring themes throughout her work. “I wanted to live differently, through cultures other than my own. When I returned to Paris at the age of twenty-four, I decided to follow my own path. The city produced a profound aesthetic shock, perfectly in tune with my aspirations. Paradoxically, I felt as though I had already lived there. The books and magazines from Western countries that were available in Taipei had nurtured my openness to the world and broadened my imagination.”
Like her native city, shaped by successive periods of colonization and foreign influence, Mei-Tsen has drawn nourishment from a wide range of cultural traditions, which she continually reinterprets through the lens of art history and the institutions—particularly museums—that embody and preserve it. Growing up in Taiwan, where a distinct national cultural narrative remained difficult to define, she was immersed in Chinese history, taught primarily through the school curriculum, while also discovering the history of art—predominantly Western—through the books available at the Taipei Public Library. The knowledge she acquired through images and publications would later take on an entirely new dimension when she began traveling to the various countries that had, at one time or another, influenced Taiwan’s cultural development. She summarizes her childhood with a simple yet revealing phrase: “I grew up within an international environment.”
At a time when travel to mainland China was not permitted, she obtained a visa in France and set out on a two-week journey across the country, visiting several major cities. She recalls: “It allowed me to confront everything I had learned at school with my own experience of the mainland, in order to better understand my identity. I was incredibly excited—I had to retrace five thousand years of history in just two weeks!” Her journey began at the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor (Qin Shi Huang), near Xi’an in Shaanxi Province. She then travelled to Guilin, whose extraordinary karst mountains create one of the most celebrated landscapes in the country. Beijing proved to be another decisive stage of the journey, where she explored both the Forbidden City and the Great Wall of China.
The (re)discovery of China was not enough for Mei-Tsen Chen. She sought to push her boundaries even further. A multidisciplinary artist, she works across a wide range of media, including drawing, photography, installation, sculpture, and painting.
A true human mosaic, Mei-Tsen Chen embraces encounters with others as an essential part of her practice. Through exhibitions in countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, she engages in dialogue with visitors as well as with the artistic masters whose works she encounters in museums, seeking to understand how others perceive her own work. These exchanges also allow her to rediscover her own culture through the contrasts and perspectives they reveal. Constantly in motion, these physical and mental journeys have shaped an identity that closely echoes the concept of the radicant, developed by Nicolas Bourriaud in his book The Radicant (Denoël, 2009). In botanical terms, "a radicant plant is one that produces adventitious roots as it grows—such as ivy or the strawberry plant..." (Larousse). Transposed to the human condition, the concept describes an individual who establishes connections across diverse contexts and environments, continually adapting and taking root anew. Such an approach implies transcoding images, translating ideas, transplanting behaviors, and fostering exchange rather than imposing fixed models.
Her multilingual abilities further reinforce her nomadic approach. In addition to her native Chinese, she speaks two Chinese dialects, French, and English, and has some knowledge of Japanese. She vividly recalls her first meaningful encounter with the physical reality of modern and contemporary art at documenta in Kassel. Her travels subsequently took her through Munich, Cologne, and Berlin, before leading her to Italy, where Rome, Florence, and Venice revealed to her the splendors of Renaissance art. Singapore’s multiculturalism echoed that of Taipei, while Lisbon allowed her to retrace, in reverse, the maritime routes once followed by sailors departing from Belém on their way to Taiwan.
For the nomadic artist, territory is not defined as a piece of land enclosed by borders, but rather as a network of intersecting lines, pathways, and channels of communication that gradually form their own web—a personal mental map. Spatial and temporal networks merge with the organic networks of the human body and with vegetal structures. Like an elastic citizen of the world, she constructs her territory mentally, through the interweaving of signs, memories, and traces that continually lead her back to herself, often in striking contrast with her culture of origin. As she explains: “I am in a constant state of searching, a perpetual displacement. I live through movement; cultural shock is necessary for me to understand my life.”
For the artist, every journey is ultimately a confrontation with oneself, and the indispensable first step of any voyage remains the act of unfolding a map. “The first encounter with a city begins with its map. It is a visceral, mental, and emotional experience that I wanted to translate into my recent works.”
Her recent research brings together maps of different cities with the highly symbolic image of the Tree of Life. The recurring colors—red, violet, and beige—evoke the epidermis as well as the nervous and circulatory systems.
The liberation of the mind allows one to absorb other worlds and new cultural codes, confronting inherited perspectives with newly acquired ones. This is, in many ways, what Mei-Tsen Chen’s practice seeks to convey. Her insistence on movement reflects a growing dimension of contemporary art, in which an increasing number of nomadic projects anchor artistic practices within a globalized and interconnected world. Rooted in experiences of travel and mobility, where techniques evolve through encounters, diverse inspirations, and lived moments, contemporary creation gives rise to bodies of work shaped by constant transformation. Mei-Tsen Chen’s oeuvre stands as a compelling example of this dynamic.
陳美岑個展--人間再造天堂，台北新苑藝術畫廊
2014年6月13日至7月13日
在「人間再造天堂」的網路裡編夢--寫在美岑新作發表之前
林惺嶽
畫家、作家、藝評家
美岑即將發表最新系列畫作"天堂"。當我看到她托人送來的圖片及文字資料，並要求我寫一篇引介時，讓我感到為難，並覺得有些迷惑。因為在藝評這方面封筆已久，迷惑的是她的新作畫面表象雖易於辨認，卻難以解讀。然而顧及她一直埋首開拓新的畫面構思及造形語境的才華及毅力，值得動筆鼓勵！
美岑新作的每一幅畫都標舉出一顆或數顆大樹，從粗大的主幹長出眾多支幹再繁衍成複雜曲折的細枝，在細密的枝椏交錯中，赫然包挾著空中鳥瞰式的都市街道圖，猶如在樹枝間出現了蜘蛛網。乍看之下很容易令人望圖生義的以為在隱喻綠化都市，其實不然。雖然她對樹的描繪相當下功夫，但似乎不在表現樹的自然生態之美。因為光禿的樹一點也不綠色盎然，反而以膚色、紅色及紫色為基調，這就非常耐人尋味。
美岑以色彩顛覆了樹的自然綠意，依我看來是刻意異化了樹的常態以演生出人體生理的想像。的確，在精密醫學儀器的透視下，人體內的血管及神經的脈絡結構非常類似樹的造形。順此類似聯想，多少可以窺探出美岑的創作意圖，那就是經由樹的造形，隱喻人的血管及神經的脈絡，從四面八方延伸入象徵都市動線的結構裡去。微妙的是兩者之間並不衝突，而是逐漸的契合與通融。如此匠心獨運的巧思，正與傳統大相逕庭。
自從工業文明發達產生都市化以後，造成人口集中，而食、衣、住、行的工業產生在擁擠的生活空間中，提供了方便與舒適的享受。但都市棋盤化的規劃把人們納進了秩序井然的生活規範，加上動力與速度的效率與日俱增，也逐漸對人類的神經帶來了壓迫，因而產生緊張、煩躁、焦慮、失眠等等的後遺病癥。走在時代前端的敏感天才們，乃率先起而背棄都市文明的社會，紛紛回歸鄉村田園或遠赴異域的部落社會中返樸歸真，要不然就是鑽進心理底層的潛意識尋找童稚的天真。這是流行已久的現代主義繪畫崛起的論調之一。
然而時代的變遷，厭棄都市文明很難一成不變，距離工業革命三百年後的新世代，可能有不同的體驗及想法。因為他們從娃娃墜地到亭亭玉立的茁壯，都在城市裡翻滾。置身於五花八門賞心悅目的人工化自然裡，自有異於傳統的體會。在鋼鐵及水泥的叢林中，何嘗不能順著科技的演進脈絡，編織另類的夢想。在現在進行式的世界裡，一個能夠自立自主的女孩，隨興之所至，可以悠遊在世界各大都市裡，瀏覽不同的人文樣貌及各種工業設計的新奇。這也是有別於農業社會時代的眼界拓展及心胸舒坦。怪不得美岑把城市視為「人間再造的天堂」。
美岑的繪畫觀與我全然不同，學生走出老師的影響獨立另闢創作蹊徑，是一種可喜的現象。她是一位具有生命內省性創作潛力的人，面對她的創作，我只能虛心的去瞭解，不宜冒然妄加評斷。我想最適當的詮釋還是美岑的創作自白：
或許在我的天堂世界裡，我像是個隱形的蜘蛛在織網，建築連線並期待著什麼事情將會發生；或者更像是個微小的蟲子，迷失在我們這個多元多變的世界網際網路之中。
A Solo Exhibition by CHEN Mei-Tsen
Reinvented Earthly Paradise - Between Taipei and Paris
Galerie Grand Siècle, Taipei
June 13 - July 13, 2014
Weaving a Dream in the Network of “Reinvented Earthly Paradise”
— Writing before Meitsen’s Solo Exhibition
LIN Hsin-Yueh
painter, writer and art critic
Meitsen is going to show her latest series of paintings, “Paradise”. I was a bit embarrassed and confused when I saw the images and documents delivered by someone she asked. She wished me to write an introduction for her. I have stopped writing art critiques for a long time and I was confused by her new works’ surface which is easy to recognize but hard to decipher. However, considering that she has always been occupying herself in the exploration of new images concept and forms, such talents and perseverance is worth writing for!
In each of Meitsen’s new works, there is one or more big trees marked; several branches derived from the bulky trunk of limbs and extended to complicated winding twigs, and among the intricacy, there grandly embracing the bird-eye’s view of the city streets as if there were a spider web in the twigs. At first sight, it is easy to interpret the image as a metaphor for urban afforestation but it is not. At the point that the bald trees aren’t greenery at all and painted with skin color, red and violet as the ground color, this is very thought-provoking.
Meitsen changed the natural green of trees by choices of colors; in my opinion, she deliberately alienated the normal state of a tree to inspire the imagination for physical body. Indeed, under a highly-precise medical instrument, blood vessels and nerve system in a human body is very similar to the shape of trees. Following the associative thinking, much or less it enables us to pry into Meitsen’s intention, trees is to human blood vessels and nerve system as their extension from all directions is to the structure of city traffic flow. Such a subtle connection with no confliction and gradually matched and fused with each other. This unique ingenuity is just opposite to the tradition.
Since the industrial culture developed and gave birth to urbanization, there was population concentration, and industries of basic necessities of life appeared in the crowded living space, which on one hand provided comfortable and convenient enjoyment; on the other hand, the checkerboard pattern of city plan restricted people to fit into an ordered morality. Moreover, the efficiency of power and speed advances with the time started to oppress human nerves and generating the after-effect such as nervousness, anxiety, fidgety, and insomnia. Therefore, the avant-garde sensitive geniuses then started to abandon the civilized society and returned to the rural countryside or went to the foreign tribal society to go back to nature, or they slipped into the subconscious to seek for child’s naivety. The above-mentioned is one of the arguments of how the long-lasting Modernism painting merged.
However, as the time changes, the ways of abandoning civilization is hard to stay the same and the new generation after three hundred years from industrial revolution might have different experience and thoughts, as they were at nowhere else but the city to be born and grow up. In all sorts of beautiful artificial nature, it’s natural to have an experience differing from tradition. There is no good reason not to follow the technology development and weave an unconventional dream in the concrete jungle. In an on-going present world, this independent girl, with her ease and pleasure, travels the big cities all around the world and reads over all kinds of novel industrial designs and cultures, which as well is originated from a new point of view and mindset compared with the time of agricultural society, and small wonder that Meitsen views the city as “Reinvented Earthly Paradise”.
Meitsen’s viewpoint of painting is distinct from mine. It’s a heartening thing that student steps outside of a teacher’s shadow and makes her own way to create art. She is a woman who creates art with her potentially of life introspection. I, when facing her works, can only be humble and try to understand the messages behind; it would be inappropriate to jump into conclusion because the best interpretation would be Meitsen’s statements:
"Maybe in my Paradise, I am the invisible spider who weaves the web, builds the link and waits for something to happen, but I feel more like the petty insect who is captured by the fragile web in our moving world."
2014年6月13日至7月13日
在「人間再造天堂」的網路裡編夢--寫在美岑新作發表之前
林惺嶽
畫家、作家、藝評家
美岑即將發表最新系列畫作"天堂"。當我看到她托人送來的圖片及文字資料，並要求我寫一篇引介時，讓我感到為難，並覺得有些迷惑。因為在藝評這方面封筆已久，迷惑的是她的新作畫面表象雖易於辨認，卻難以解讀。然而顧及她一直埋首開拓新的畫面構思及造形語境的才華及毅力，值得動筆鼓勵！
美岑新作的每一幅畫都標舉出一顆或數顆大樹，從粗大的主幹長出眾多支幹再繁衍成複雜曲折的細枝，在細密的枝椏交錯中，赫然包挾著空中鳥瞰式的都市街道圖，猶如在樹枝間出現了蜘蛛網。乍看之下很容易令人望圖生義的以為在隱喻綠化都市，其實不然。雖然她對樹的描繪相當下功夫，但似乎不在表現樹的自然生態之美。因為光禿的樹一點也不綠色盎然，反而以膚色、紅色及紫色為基調，這就非常耐人尋味。
美岑以色彩顛覆了樹的自然綠意，依我看來是刻意異化了樹的常態以演生出人體生理的想像。的確，在精密醫學儀器的透視下，人體內的血管及神經的脈絡結構非常類似樹的造形。順此類似聯想，多少可以窺探出美岑的創作意圖，那就是經由樹的造形，隱喻人的血管及神經的脈絡，從四面八方延伸入象徵都市動線的結構裡去。微妙的是兩者之間並不衝突，而是逐漸的契合與通融。如此匠心獨運的巧思，正與傳統大相逕庭。
自從工業文明發達產生都市化以後，造成人口集中，而食、衣、住、行的工業產生在擁擠的生活空間中，提供了方便與舒適的享受。但都市棋盤化的規劃把人們納進了秩序井然的生活規範，加上動力與速度的效率與日俱增，也逐漸對人類的神經帶來了壓迫，因而產生緊張、煩躁、焦慮、失眠等等的後遺病癥。走在時代前端的敏感天才們，乃率先起而背棄都市文明的社會，紛紛回歸鄉村田園或遠赴異域的部落社會中返樸歸真，要不然就是鑽進心理底層的潛意識尋找童稚的天真。這是流行已久的現代主義繪畫崛起的論調之一。
然而時代的變遷，厭棄都市文明很難一成不變，距離工業革命三百年後的新世代，可能有不同的體驗及想法。因為他們從娃娃墜地到亭亭玉立的茁壯，都在城市裡翻滾。置身於五花八門賞心悅目的人工化自然裡，自有異於傳統的體會。在鋼鐵及水泥的叢林中，何嘗不能順著科技的演進脈絡，編織另類的夢想。在現在進行式的世界裡，一個能夠自立自主的女孩，隨興之所至，可以悠遊在世界各大都市裡，瀏覽不同的人文樣貌及各種工業設計的新奇。這也是有別於農業社會時代的眼界拓展及心胸舒坦。怪不得美岑把城市視為「人間再造的天堂」。
美岑的繪畫觀與我全然不同，學生走出老師的影響獨立另闢創作蹊徑，是一種可喜的現象。她是一位具有生命內省性創作潛力的人，面對她的創作，我只能虛心的去瞭解，不宜冒然妄加評斷。我想最適當的詮釋還是美岑的創作自白：
或許在我的天堂世界裡，我像是個隱形的蜘蛛在織網，建築連線並期待著什麼事情將會發生；或者更像是個微小的蟲子，迷失在我們這個多元多變的世界網際網路之中。
A Solo Exhibition by CHEN Mei-Tsen
Reinvented Earthly Paradise - Between Taipei and Paris
Galerie Grand Siècle, Taipei
June 13 - July 13, 2014
Weaving a Dream in the Network of “Reinvented Earthly Paradise”
— Writing before Meitsen’s Solo Exhibition
LIN Hsin-Yueh
painter, writer and art critic
Meitsen is going to show her latest series of paintings, “Paradise”. I was a bit embarrassed and confused when I saw the images and documents delivered by someone she asked. She wished me to write an introduction for her. I have stopped writing art critiques for a long time and I was confused by her new works’ surface which is easy to recognize but hard to decipher. However, considering that she has always been occupying herself in the exploration of new images concept and forms, such talents and perseverance is worth writing for!
In each of Meitsen’s new works, there is one or more big trees marked; several branches derived from the bulky trunk of limbs and extended to complicated winding twigs, and among the intricacy, there grandly embracing the bird-eye’s view of the city streets as if there were a spider web in the twigs. At first sight, it is easy to interpret the image as a metaphor for urban afforestation but it is not. At the point that the bald trees aren’t greenery at all and painted with skin color, red and violet as the ground color, this is very thought-provoking.
Meitsen changed the natural green of trees by choices of colors; in my opinion, she deliberately alienated the normal state of a tree to inspire the imagination for physical body. Indeed, under a highly-precise medical instrument, blood vessels and nerve system in a human body is very similar to the shape of trees. Following the associative thinking, much or less it enables us to pry into Meitsen’s intention, trees is to human blood vessels and nerve system as their extension from all directions is to the structure of city traffic flow. Such a subtle connection with no confliction and gradually matched and fused with each other. This unique ingenuity is just opposite to the tradition.
Since the industrial culture developed and gave birth to urbanization, there was population concentration, and industries of basic necessities of life appeared in the crowded living space, which on one hand provided comfortable and convenient enjoyment; on the other hand, the checkerboard pattern of city plan restricted people to fit into an ordered morality. Moreover, the efficiency of power and speed advances with the time started to oppress human nerves and generating the after-effect such as nervousness, anxiety, fidgety, and insomnia. Therefore, the avant-garde sensitive geniuses then started to abandon the civilized society and returned to the rural countryside or went to the foreign tribal society to go back to nature, or they slipped into the subconscious to seek for child’s naivety. The above-mentioned is one of the arguments of how the long-lasting Modernism painting merged.
However, as the time changes, the ways of abandoning civilization is hard to stay the same and the new generation after three hundred years from industrial revolution might have different experience and thoughts, as they were at nowhere else but the city to be born and grow up. In all sorts of beautiful artificial nature, it’s natural to have an experience differing from tradition. There is no good reason not to follow the technology development and weave an unconventional dream in the concrete jungle. In an on-going present world, this independent girl, with her ease and pleasure, travels the big cities all around the world and reads over all kinds of novel industrial designs and cultures, which as well is originated from a new point of view and mindset compared with the time of agricultural society, and small wonder that Meitsen views the city as “Reinvented Earthly Paradise”.
Meitsen’s viewpoint of painting is distinct from mine. It’s a heartening thing that student steps outside of a teacher’s shadow and makes her own way to create art. She is a woman who creates art with her potentially of life introspection. I, when facing her works, can only be humble and try to understand the messages behind; it would be inappropriate to jump into conclusion because the best interpretation would be Meitsen’s statements:
"Maybe in my Paradise, I am the invisible spider who weaves the web, builds the link and waits for something to happen, but I feel more like the petty insect who is captured by the fragile web in our moving world."