TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – After a three-year interval, Chiang Yomei (蔣友梅) returns with a solo exhibition showcasing her introspective journey through religion, literature, and the philosophy of life, expressed in oil paintings, works on paper, and sculptural installations.
Titled "Where I Rest My Heart," the show echoes the artist's eponymous poem and reflects her recent pursuit of inner peace and fulfillment in her creative life.
Chiang's art is deeply rooted in her love of literature and her long-standing engagement with Buddhist studies. Her works bear the marks of Buddhist philosophy, Zen, and the spirit of Chinese ink-wash painting.
However, while her creations begin with a Buddhist cosmological perspective, they delve into contemporary concerns, including the relationship between artistic process and product.
The 64-year-old masterfully employs diverse media, creating rich and dynamic visual effects through the physical interactions of materials. The blending, flowing, and diffusing of substances like stones, incense ash, gauze, and coarse salt on the canvas not only enrich the texture of her works but also transform them into evocative symbols.
They guide viewers into the artist's personal experiences, memories, and emotional landscape, fostering profound insights into time and space.
This exhibition emphasizes smaller and medium-sized works created over the past year. Chiang's paintings emanate a sense of lightness and tranquility, even as her themes explore the depths of life and death.
The translucent effects achieved through diverse media, while grounded in the spatial awareness and visual forms of Western abstract painting, retain the Eastern philosophical pursuit of the interplay between emptiness and form, line, and vital energy.
Beyond her two-dimensional works, the exhibition features three sculptural pieces from the "A Stone Sutra" series. The artist created molds of her own hands, each holding a round stone inscribed with sutras.
These works stem from Chiang's habit of collecting round stones during her travels, inscribing them, carrying them with her, and eventually leaving them at significant locations worldwide.
Chiang envisions life as a circle, with herself at the center, viewing birth and death as segments of that circle, and life's journey as a cyclical process of encounters and realizations.
Born of Chinese, Russian, and German lineage, and the eldest granddaughter of former President Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), Chiang Yo-mei brings a unique perspective to her art.
Her academic journey, culminating in dual Bachelor's degrees in art history and English literature from the University of Kent, and advanced study of Chinese art history at SOAS, University of London, has provided a rich intellectual framework for her creative pursuits.
Chiang's works have been showcased in exhibitions at venues including Sotheby's Hong Kong and the Elena Shchukina Gallery in London, and are included in private and public collections throughout Asia and Europe.
"Where I Rest My Heart" takes place at Tina Keng Gallery until March 29.
