2023 Iridescent Summer

Text by Shen Yuchang

From August to September 2023, San Gallery hosted the joint exhibition “Irisation of Midsummer,” showcasing works by six artists: Akaidzukan, Yang Yu-Ning, Hua Ji-Lin, Iida Honoka, Aratake Mirai, and Hu Ching-Wen.

Akaidzukan frequently employs high-brightness and high-saturation monochromatic vivid hues to depict mysterious phenomena in the blurred realm between dreams and reality. The showcased “Norinori” series draws its name from the Japanese term “ノリノリ,” which originally means “moving in perfect sync with the rhythm of a song,” and extends to mean “enthusiastically blending into the joyful atmosphere.” Written in kanji as “乗り乗り,” it conveys the sense of “riding.” Akaidzukan creatively leveraged the double entendre of “ノリノリ” to conceptualize the series of paintings featuring “animals joyfully riding in vehicles.” The relationship between “vehicles” and “rhythm” evokes the pleasurable experience of driving to music, as well as the combination of “mikoshi” and “musical performance” in festivals. The relationship between “animals” and “rhythm” recalls the scene from the “Canon of Yao” in the “Book of Documents,” where “all the beasts dance in unison to the beating stones.”

赤いづかん, Riding-Pig: Pig, Washi Paper, Mineral Pigments, 16.5 x 9 cm (single piece size), 2023

Yuning Yang, Round Table with Rattan Chair, Ink on Paper, 96×137 cm, 2022

Yu-ning Yang excels in using broad, continuous strokes and distinct shades of ink to create vivid and expressive images on raw leather paper. In this exhibition, his piece “Landscape by the Shore” features wide brushstrokes, drawn with a twisting technique to outline the soft, undulating shoreline; short, straight, fragmented strokes with wet, thick ink to hint at the moisture-laden vegetation along the shore; and arc-shaped short strokes with very light ink to depict clouds swept by the wind. The grainy texture of the dried ink combined with the retained brush marks on the raw paper skillfully evokes the sense of dawn or dusk light filtering through the mist.

In “Round Table with Rattan Chairs,” light, dried ink with coiling strokes suggests the semi-transparent, delicate texture of a crumpled tablecloth and its light, draping effect. Dense, dried ink with long, straight, decisive lines, and short, slightly angled, parallel lines are used to depict the rattan stems forming the chair’s framework and the rattan skin embellishing and weaving the chair seat. The interplay of brush width, stroke direction, and ink intensity gives simple, brisk brush marks a visual tension, transforming them into representations of different fibrous materials.

For many years, Jilin Hua has focused on the subtle, indescribable emotions between people as her main theme. She attempts to inscribe classical poetry or pop song lyrics on her paintings, creating contexts where these delicate emotions can surface through the expressions, gestures, and postures of the figures, as well as their clothing, settings, and objects.

In the “Heat” series being exhibited this time, she continues this theme but without inscriptions or colors, using only ink and gofun (white pigment). During the pandemic, infrared thermal imaging devices were widely installed in public spaces to quickly identify individuals with fever. Inspired by the principle of converting touchable temperature into visible images, the “Heat” series adopts the style of thermal imaging. This series creates a new logic for depicting figures that is neither “human sketching” nor “sanbaiho” (the method of using white space), with a completely different approach to light, shadow, and volume.

Furthermore, to interpret the style of thermal imaging, Hua Jilin employs rarely used techniques such as large-scale ink staining on her usual Torinoko paper, creating mottled marks resembling window fog or ice cracks. These marks subtly hint at the body heat and emotions constantly evaporating and diffusing within the space.

Hua Jilin, Heat-07, color on paper, 50x60cm, 2022

Honoka Iida, “Morning of Lake Shizen,” Kumohadamashi paper, mineral pigments, 53×72.7cm, 2022

Honoka Iida enjoys depicting serene natural landscapes. In this exhibition, two of her works, “Morning at Shizen Lake” and “Abundance—Biei—,” are presented. Both pieces use mineral pigments on kumohadamashi paper to portray scenic themes.

“Morning at Shizen Lake” depicts a lakeside forest and its reflection on the water. The waterline is positioned near the halfway point of the painting, creating a visually appealing symmetry. The trees in the forest are rendered with “dots” and “lines” directly, rather than using the outline-and-fill method, allowing the mineral pigments to create rich, blended tones through varying intensities and layers. The reflection of the forest on the lake is painted with horizontal brush strokes, subtly breaking the shapes and creating a misty morning atmosphere by the lakeside.

“Abundance—Biei—” portrays Biei Town in Hokkaido, famous for its hilly terrain and thriving agriculture and tourism industries. The painting illustrates a patchwork-like rural landscape, featuring golden waves of grain and low farmhouses in the foreground, rolling hills and forests in the middle ground, and distant blue mountains and sky at the top, guiding the viewer’s gaze upward and evoking a sense of sublimity.

The paintings of Miku Niinomi predominantly feature female figures and cats as subjects. The works on display, such as “Dew that Enriches” and “Light from the Sun,” center around half-length portraits of women. These figures are delicately rendered with precise, flexible lines that create a detailed and fluid sketch. A light wash of color, resembling delicate makeup, is applied to the skin, with slight touches of red around the eyes, lips, and fingertips, giving an impression of purity and translucence. In contrast to the skin, the hair is treated with darker tones, though to avoid monotony, hints of vibrant red and blue are interspersed among the browns and blacks to create a glossy, wet look.

“In the Morning as Usual” and “Twinkling Star” both feature cats. The cats’ eyes are painted in a style similar to that used for female figures, with a crystalline, transparent quality that suggests a lively, flickering vitality behind the image, like starlight or flickering flames. The fur is not directly depicted but is instead created with a granular texture of mineral pigments, resembling sugar, combined with a shading technique that gives the fur a fluffy, airy appearance.

Miku Niinomi, Shining Stars, Hemp Paper, Classic Japanese Paper, Mineral Pigments, Foil, 27.3 × 27.3 cm, 2023

Qingwen Hu, “Together,” silver foil, natural pigments on paper, 80 cm diameter, 2.5 cm thickness, 2023

Qingwen Hu is often captivated by the fleeting changes of light and shadow in everyday scenes. Initially, she used digital tools to capture and record these moments. Later, she began to lay paper flat on the ground and, like projecting an image, traced the light and shadow directly onto the paper with a pen, following the ephemeral and ever-shifting contours created by sunlight and wind. In addition to her themes, Qingwen prefers painting materials that are sensitive to changes over time and reflect the surrounding environment, such as East Asian painting paper and silver foil. East Asian painting paper is smooth, thin, and resilient. Although it cannot support heavy layers of paint, it excels at recording various traces of activity on its surface immediately and permanently. Japanese silver foil, being extremely thin, often wrinkles due to even the faintest airflow during application and easily changes color due to oxidation, creating unique marks and variable hues that brushes and paint cannot replicate. The exhibited “Scenes” series features works on painting paper, depicting the changes of light and shadow through the technique of silver foil and sulfurization. The light and shadow are elusive, while the silver foil is substantial. The combination of lightly stained pigments for everyday corners and silver foil for shadows creates an intriguing inversion of reality and illusion.

“Tamamushi-iro” (玉虫色) refers to the iridescent colors on the shell of the jewel beetle, which shift between green and purple depending on the angle of light, showcasing a vibrant metallic sheen. This type of iridescence is known in Japanese as “玉虫” (tamamushi), a term that has been cherished since ancient times for its dazzling, multicolored appearance. The characteristic of “玉虫色” to change colors with different lighting also metaphorically represents “different perspectives from different viewpoints.” This exhibition, titled “Tamamushi-iro,” brings together six artists from Taiwan and Japan for a joint exhibition in the height of summer, aiming to showcase the diverse contemporary applications of traditional East Asian painting materials through various creative approaches.