Duration：2019.12.07 (sat.) – 2019.12.29 (sun.)
Opening：2019.12.07 (sat.) 3:00pm
Venue：Liang gallery 1F
Artist： Yu Ya-Lan

The ridge is a dissecting line set at a distance. It is the mountain’s outline, the cut made to sever the earth from the sky. It is rolling and extensive but precise and sharp. The distance is a humble gesture, and although the fixed line of sight is limited, the desire to document is without limits.

Light & Ridge is the theme of Ya-Lan Yu’s first exhibition in three years, and her latest body of work shows experimental qualities, with the collection serving as a documentary for the subtle transformation and breakthrough she’s made artistically in the last few years. Landscape has always been Yu’s focus, as she experiments with different techniques and textures to recount the way she sees nature. Landscape is also the motif of this solo exhibition, presenting images composed with colliding and overlapping brushwork to create an ambiance with twirling clouds and misty fogs drifting over mountaintops. Scattered with dots and intricate lines, slight moisture seems to fill the air. “Light and ridge” come to form an artificial illuminant in the shape of mountain peaks. Oil-based ink haphazardly overlapped on a wooden board and intermingled with light and shadow to give rise to a glow which creates a gradient effect on the colors because of the distance kept.

The philosophy conveyed by the artworks and the bilateral dialogue could only be deciphered through direct and honest ways of seeing with one’s heart. Technical experimentation driven by curiosity is changing rapidly with every passing day, and as for her own creative journey, Yu has experimented for years seeking to create different textures on flat surfaces using oil-based ink. On view in this solo exhibition are many artworks created using techniques of color gradation and also tattered, peeling effects.

For instance, this collection of artworks is composed based on her two customary perspectives: the birds-eye view and the eye-level view. The birds-eye view presents a grand perspective that looks down from above, and a dichotomy is presented via an eye-level separation. She creates images showing vertical and horizontal perspectives, employing a formula for composition that separates the sky from the earth. She applies soft and gentle colors and uses intricate and fragmented lines to depict mountain ridges, with a constellation/dotted pattern evenly distributed. The result is a soft and tender ambiance where sweet blissfulness seeps. Although the images lack human presence and are stripped of the bleak sense of solitude seen from the artist’s earlier creations, however, compared with her artworks from a few years back, the internal transformation that the artist has undergone is quite apparent. This metamorphosis is prompted by changes of time, which has gradually expunged her illusive dreaminess and made her more grounded to reality.

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