LAN Zhaoxing x HSIEH Fuyuan

In a world driven by fast-flowing images and information, looking seems to have become easier, yet increasingly fleeting. For LAN Zhaoxing and HSIEH Fuyuan, however, artistic creation has always stemmed from a slow and sustained gaze.

Though the two artists use oil paint, sculpture, and ink painting as their respective creative languages, they share a mutual focus on the existential state of humanity in the world. They are in no rush to provide definitive answers, nor do they chase dramatic narratives. Instead, through repeated gazing and continuous labor, they respond to life’s most fundamental question: How do we perceive the world, and how do we find our place within it?

This exhibition presents two distinct yet echoing creative paths. When a landscape ceases to be merely a landscape, and when forms bear the weight of time and spirit, the act of viewing transforms into a way to rediscover both oneself and the world.

LAN Zhaoxing: Mapping Spirit Coordinates in a Solitary Mountain Forest

Inspired by Paul Cézanne in her two-dimensional works, LAN’s landscape paintings value a strong sense of orderliness and musicality. As she puts it, “I truly enjoy the act of hatching lines. The repetitive process itself creates a sense of equilibrium that offers a purposeless yet purposeful pleasure.” The trees under LAN’s brush are often rootless and arranged in orderly rows, while the titles of the works embed philosophical musings, suggesting that her practice unfolds as a Heideggerian wandering off the beaten track—a geometric collage exercise carried out within a forest of thought.

For me, landscape is a fusion of the external world and one's inner state. It is not merely a visual representation, but an active, chosen projection and reflection of the inner world, carrying deep symbolic significance.

Carving the Thickness of Spirit Between Light and Form

Painting constructs visual and psychological spaces through color and form, presenting the viewing experience in a two-dimensional language. Relief, on the other hand, grants form a more direct sense of presence through actual physical contours and the interplay of light and shadow. Compared to painting, relief relies more heavily on the participation of light. As light sweeps across the surface, subtle indentations and shadows are awakened, allowing the forms to exhibit a more powerful vitality. 

LAN Zhaoxing's wood relief works blend the characteristics of both painting and sculpture, combining color, form, and the inherent thickness of the material itself. By preserving the traces left by sandpaper grit, she allows materiality and spirituality to reflect one another.

In the two works New Sense of Peace and Spring Meadows, I wanted to capture the rising vapor manifested by Taiwan’s humid climate, translating the sultry physical sensation I felt into the image. I used repeatedly layered, tiny, curved brushstrokes to depict the slowly ascending heat waves.

For the piece The Full Tide, I wanted to deconstruct traditional landscape painting into three distinct pictorial elements: on the left, I painted the water; in the middle panel, the reflection of the mountain; and on the far right, the mountain itself.