TKG+ is pleased to present Project+ for the 2019 edition of West Bund Art & Design, bringing exceptional works from Mit Jai Inn, Sawangwongse Yawnghwe, Hou I-Ting, and Charwei Tsai. With the subversive vision of TKG+ as the starting point, Project+ suggests the exponential growth and synergistic effect of contemporary art, manifested in diverse viewpoints and cultural signifiers that underlie different cultural systems in Asia. From Mit Jai Inn’s highly interactive painting installations, which come in rough and organic oil pigment clumps, giving off a sense of wildness and freshness of tropical rainforests; to Hou I-Ting’s superimposition of Chinese traditional embroidery on photography, creating a familiar yet foreign visual impact. From Sawangwongse Yawnghwe’s exploration of Burma’s hidden history through his family photographs; to contemporary ink paintings by Charwei Tsai, which deconstruct the gesture of handwriting into a meditation on spirituality and materiality.
Born in 1960 in Chiang Mai, Thailand, Mit Jai Inn garnered international attention at the 2018 Biennale of Sydney. In 1992, Mit Jai Inn took up the leading role to form an artist group, Chiang Mai Social Installation (CMSI), which marked a milestone in Thai contemporary art. Since then, Mit has exhibited internationally, with an active presence in Southeast Asia and Europe. Mit’s distinct abstract painting installations come in different forms, from huge canvases hung from the ceiling, oil-on-wood works that hang on the wall or transformed into tabletops, to the thickly textured two-sided canvas scrolls on the ground. Highly visual and tactile, Mit’s work alludes to the measurable and the imperceptible by highlighting painting's physicality and its relationship with the viewer when they inhabit the same dimension.
Sawangwongse Yawnghwe was born in 1971 in Shan State, Burma. His grandfather, Sao Shwe Thaik, was Burma’s first president after the country gained independence from Britain in 1948. Shwe Thaik died in prison following the 1962 military coup, and his family was driven into exile. The artist’s painting and installation practice is profoundly interwoven with politics with reference to his family history. Family photographs also provide the basis for a pictorial language through which he explores current and past events in the country, suggesting that existing and available archives cannot reveal a nation’s entire truth.
Hou I-Ting was born in 1979 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Her practice pivots around the changing relationship between the body and imagery over the course of time. For this year, Hou presents her iconic series, where superimposition of embroidery upon photography conjures an uncanny visual impact that upends the notion of imagery. Through the combination of foreign materials, Hou challenges the way we identify imagery in everyday life, while reconfiguring an otherwise prosaic visual experience.
Charwei Tsai was born in 1980 in Taipei, Taiwan. Concerned with the human/nature relationship, she meditates on the complexities among cultural beliefs, spirituality, and transience. In the Bonsai series, the artist transcribes the lyrics of love songs on the sketch of an artful miniature replica of a full-grown tree in nature. The sense of love and loneliness expressed through the characters becomes the leaves on a flourishing tiny tree, embodying the art of calligraphy inextricably intertwined with painting.
Under the title of “+”, the project explores the distinction in aesthetics of different regions in Asia by placing varied cultural symbols of art language under careful scrutiny. The symbol “+” connotes not only the Chinese character十, or ten, but also a decade’s journey of TKG+. By building bridges between Taiwan and international art circles, TKG+ propels itself forward with the mission of supporting the most intriguing and significant contemporary art in Taiwan and across Asia.