A Collection of Microcracks — LIN Hung-Hsin's Solo Exhibition

Liang Gallery is pleased to announce “A Collection of Microckracks,” a solo exhibition of works by Taiwanese artist Lin Hung-Hsin. This exhibition is a representation of works created since 2012.

Lin Hung-Hsin borrows the character “flâneur” from Walter Benjamin’s (1892-1940) works as the main subject in his artworks. From The Flâneur Series in 2011 to A Man with Cracks Series in 2016, with the face painted with white powder and the costume corresponding to the environment, the flâneur anonymously observes the city. In Lin’s paintings, the characterization – which includes gestures, expressions, and positions –, props, lighting, colors, and setting all together attempt to allure the spectators’ gaze and to frame a space where illusion is allowed to emerge.

The changing city life has provoked dazzling hallucinations, while social and political chaos has precluded people from seeing the difference between right and wrong. The Internet has become an important source of information, which has not only accelerated interpersonal communication, but has also tested our cognition and understanding of things. It has caused people to be at a loss when trying to distinguish true from false, stimulated mickrocracking of personalities, and made everyone’s value judgement indistinct. This exhibition explores people’s body in the state of cracking. Either each and every individual or society as a whole, all of us are inevitably affected by socialization and various influences of the city, environment and family. Everything has become a collection of microcracks.

In the works at this exhibition, the artist depends much on visual effects, inserting them in painting to vary and collapse the boundary between image and painting. The shades of colors are either removed or altered, while the background is intentionally deconstructed or simplified to fantasize the noise of the city. Figures are cloned or modified, with their faces erased or distorted in accordance with the twisted, reinterpreted emotions. “Realism,” which I am referring to does not imply the reproduction of real objects, it is more an imitation of a video image. The paradoxical story draws an analogy of contemporary virtualization and exceeds natural life experience.

Born in Yunlin, Taiwan in 1975, Lin Hung-Hsin received his MFA from the National Taiwan University of Arts. Before being devoted to artistic practice as a full-time artist, Lin had been working as an advertising designer for almost 15 years. His paintings feature a realistic expression, but are different from the objective representation of the American photorealism. Instead, he adopts a strong subjective perspective while combining two-dimensional vector symbols and images of visual spaces with his personal experiences and illusions.