Duration：2018.07.07 Sat. – 2018.07.29 Sun.
Press Preview：2018.07.06 Fri. 12:00pm
Opening：2018.07.08 Sun. 3:00pm
Venue：Liang Gallery 2F
Artist：LO Chiao-Ling

Liang Gallery is pleased to announce “Ideal Life,” a solo exhibition by Taiwanese artist Lo Chiao-Ling. The paintings created by Lo during the past few years are closely related to her family life. Many of her paintings are portraits of children painted with a sense of lightness and sobriety. The people from her real life are given new looks and lives on her canvas.

Seeing the arrangement of these portraits, it is like a friend list or a yearbook that are image-based techniques to signify social relations or emotional networks. These faces reflect artist meticulous observation on human nature, and the artistic expression also reveals what she believes to be the values of humanity. Lo’s paintings are not limited to portraits but also subjects related to home or childlike fantasy. Her brush caresses the thin but yet multi-layered paint, fast and softly, occasionally creating delicate traces like doodling which penetrates the paint and is thus vaguely reflected on the surface of the image. Through its lightness and purity, it echoes the innocent faces in other portrait paintings.

Regarding the title “Ideal Life”, there is the way of looking at things and the way of being looked at. It refers to creating a space for looking in an already existing space. What we see in the space (the painting) is ideal or, in other words, is the ideal of mental space. The children in the paintings are as simple as they appear to be, and we can only gaze into them attentively. In the quietness between us, we are aware of our own existence. The understanding of ideal varies to different people. For Lo, an ideal is one begins with, which makes the ideal life possible.

Artist Biography

Lo Chiao-Ling was born in Taipei, Taiwan, in 1981. She received her Master’s Degree in Fine Arts from the Taipei National University of the Arts in 2009. Childhood memories and the people she had contact with in her life are inspiration for her artworks. By depicting the image of the child, she aims to capture the innocence and sincerity that everybody has owned once. By the way of creating these works, she represents the glorious and warm feelings from her memories and reflects on the connection between self and social environment. Her works Students (2010) and Play with Me (2008) have been collected by the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts.