Double Square 双方藝廊

Double Square Gallery is pleased to present Cryptozoic Eon – Tung Hsin-Ru Solo Exhibition from August 7 to September 18, 2021. After receiving her BFA in Ink Painting from Taipei National University of the Arts, Tung later obtained her MFA from Pratt Institute, New York. In recent years, she has mainly created her work with acrylic paint, which she has combined with the thinking of ink painting to formulate a unique painting style. This solo exhibition marks another collaboration between the artist and the gallery since her participation in Lineage – Taiwan Contemporary Abstract Art Exhibition at Double Square Gallery five years ago. The title, borrowed from geology, points to an era from the early formation of planet Earth to some 45 million years ago when the burst of visible living creatures took place. The title therefore indicates the artist’s attempt to find and explore more potential perspectives from a macrocosmic point of view. In addition to medium- and large-sized paintings that her audience are familiar with, the exhibition also features an impressive number of more than one hundred small-sized, never-before-seen paintings created since 2018, including the series of Cryptozoic Eon, Ordovician and Pangea.

A poet’s daughter that grew up in a scholarly family, painting has always been part of Tung’s life since childhood. Her very first understanding of painting stemmed from abstract artist Chu Wei-Bor’s artistic concepts; and her creative style has combined her training in ink painting from the college years, the Western creative ideas learned when studying in New York and her personal experiences gained from traveling and her full immersion in nature. When painting a work, Tung habitually places the canvas flatly on the ground; and after she chooses the colors, she then creates the foundation and texture of the piece from an overlooking angle and with intuitive automatic techniques before adding more colors to enrich the work with lines and details. Having always focused on living beings, nature and space, for the artist, the making of her work resembles a process of infusing her personal energy into an enclosed space while following it to dance, expand and give forms. Throughout this process, colors are layered, subverted and reconstructed until she becomes satisfied with the work. Cryptozoic Eon serves as a review and organization of the artist’s multifaceted creative experimentation in the recent years as well as a truthful revelation of her inner world.

As it is suggested by the series titles – Cryptozoic Eon, Heaven and Earth and Ordovician, which suggest temporal scales far exceeding the human life span, viewing Tung’s work resembles observing the formations in this world from an aerial, macrocosmic point of view. Cryptozoic Eon depicts what Earth might look like after its birth when all sorts of materials and energies collided, merged, perished, renewed and reformed again. Therefore, the palette of the series comprises intensely contrasting colors, portraying nature but not a nature that people are familiar with. Cambrian and Ordovician, on the other hand, show a bolder palette of a wider color range. Also named after geological terms, chronologically speaking, these periods came after the Cryptozoic Eon when the world gradually stabilized yet the formation of biological life was in an obscure state—it recalls an invisible creator who was still experimenting in various ways with the possible looks and forms of life; or one could say that the traces of once existed life seem to surface in the geological textures delineated by the artist. Both Heaven and Earth and Pangea are small-scale works. Mixing her training in ink painting with Eastern philosophical ideas, the series depict the birth and chaos of a newborn world. Each work can either be viewed individually or juxtaposed with others to form a larger combination. If there were satellite images of this newborn world, they might not be that different from these works. Tung’s painting reflects the states of her inner world. Her attempts from one size and one palette to another reveal her constantly evolving perspective and horizon. The process of trying, destructing and trying again corresponds to that of geological formation and sedimentation over tens of millions of years before everything finally comes to a still and settles in each of the majestic, distinctive landscapes.

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