• Duration：2017.05.06. Sat. – 2017.06.04. Sun.
• Opening：2017.05.06. Sat. 3:00pm
• Press Preview：2017.05.05 Sat. 12:00pm
• Artist：KUO Bor-Jou
• Curator: PAI Shih-Ming

Liang Gallery is proud to present the work of Kuo Bor-Jou for the first time at its gallery space. The exhibition includes a selection of work from over five years of his career focusing on abstract work created by the artist with mixed-media.

For the recent decade, the artist has been exploring the method as how The Inked Highlights deals with its theme. The form features a clear but yet obscure, free but yet cautious, tangible but yet intangible geometric vocabulary to create a mutually overlapping relationship of constant clashes and conversations, through which a world of “ink images” is established, distinguished and independent as the image transcends the form. The overwhelmingly pleasant and soul-refreshing visual scenery can hardly be described or defined with words. It enters the realm of absoluteness, as often discussed in philosophy. It can be either abstract or figurative, if not both. Meanwhile, the artist adopts mixed-media to imitate the brushwork and colors of ink art in the series, making it the keynote of the works as if the artist’s breathes, pulses, and thoughts were externalized in the artworks. “Ink image” has become an individual’s sign of life.

Most of Kuo’s artworks are created with mixed-media. He adopts montage to collage drawings, semi-automatism, printmaking, and readymade. By overlapping the various materials, he creates an aesthetic space between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional. A method like this is to originate a world of fantasy and imagination, to “visualize the poetry-like images.” In other words, the place where the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional interlace is a lyrical space as rationality alternates with emotions. The world of fantasy with interwoven ink and colors is both dynamic and still, circular and square, fast and slow. The organic conversation reveals the pulse, structure, and order as found in the origin of life. Meanwhile, the transformation is as loud as the spring thunders, as splattering as summer showers, as frosty as autumn clouds, and as pure as winter snow. Each has its uniqueness, but in the end they are closely connected.

Throughout Kuo’s artistic career, the transition from realism, semi-abstraction, to the realm beyond form symbolizes a journey challenging the limit of the self. The terms like “self” and “personality” are buried in history. What Kuo’s ink art signifies is the spontaneous revelation closer to life and seasons. There is no need to risk oneself in looking for unnecessary interpretations, definitions, and expressions. Everyone is a mirror of others. The impact of each encounter thus reflects the prismatic reality. The artistic trends of this era cannot be clearer to Kuo that “one should emphasize the process rather than pursuing the outcome.” With a reflective attempt to remove one’s purpose and to reject universality, media has become the only truth to represent everything. Each medium can be studied and interpreted individually for that each one of them has its unique presence. We can hardly distinguish between ink and colors, image and spirit, or subject and object. They are no longer the tools to fulfill aesthetics, morality, or religious belief. According to such logic, to liberate media is to liberate forms, and to liberate forms is to liberate thoughts, behaviors, and expressions. The realm beyond form is where art builds itself a home.

About Kuo Bor-Jou

Kuo Bor-Jou, born in 1960 in Tainan, received a master’s degree in Fine Arts from the City University of New York. Currently, he is Dean of the College of Humanities and Arts and Professor of the Department of Art and Design at the National Taipei University of Education. He is also Appointed Professor of Doctorate Program of Interdisciplinary Studies of Art, academician at the Taiwan Academy of Fine Arts, and member of the Association of Taiwan Artist Today.

Kuo Bor-Jou applies pluralistic artistic expression in his works. His love for Taiwan and the idea to travel the world has initiated his attempt to convey the encounter between traditional and modern, as well as to keep the dialogue between East and West. He arbitrarily uses collage techniques to introduce the fragments of life or material objects into his works. By re-assembling and collaging from images of different space-time backgrounds he makes the canvas look humorous, rich in beauty of the stacked images, and filled with whimsical imagination revealing poetic imagery.

The artist has had over twenty solo exhibitions and ten group exhibitions at various museums and galleries in Taiwan and abroad. His works have been included into permanent collections in many museums in Japan, the USA, the United Kingdom, and Australia, also museums and various public and private institutions in Taiwan, including Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Art, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Chimei Museum, Yeh Rong Jia Museum, Taipei Medical University, Academia Sinica, Feng Chia University, Goethe-Institute, and Kuo Mu Sheng Foundation. His works have also been collected by private collectors.