Taipei Travel

LAN Zhaoxing: Mapping Spirit Coordinates in a Solitary Mountain Forest
LAN Zhaoxing, born in Shanxi in 1977, comes from an artistic lineage grounded in rigorous formal training. She received a bachelor's degree in Sculpture from Shanxi University in 2001 and a master's degree in Oil Painting from Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in 2008. Presenting 40 works from her oeuvre, including 13 oil paintings, 20 ink paintings, 4 sculptures, and 3 relief works, this exhibition offers a comprehensive view of how she constructs a lofty and pure spiritual realm through solid form and philosophical dialectics.

LAN's creative practice stems from speculative thinking. Like a philosophical wanderer, she establishes her stronghold in three-dimensional works while freely traversing the realm of two-dimensional creation. She regards iron as a manifestation of the historical progression of human civilization, forging it together with stainless steel into Mountain Cabin, a spiritual sanctuary insulated from worldly disturbance, reflecting her psychological resonance with Ludwig Wittgenstein. Meanwhile, iron sculptures, such as Walking Man in a Giant Listening, adopt radical reduction to probe the essence of existence that enters a trans-temporal dialogue with Alberto Giacometti. Ingeniously combining beeswax and wooden panels to create relief works, she develops translucent and mottled textures that echo ancient murals across time while sealing the weight of time within the image.

Inspired by Paul Cézanne in her two-dimensional works, LAN's landscape paintings value a strong sense of orderliness and musicality. As she puts it, ''I truly enjoy the act of hatching lines. The repetitive process itself creates a sense of equilibrium that offers a purposeless yet purposeful pleasure.'' The trees under LAN's brush are often rootless and arranged in orderly rows, while the titles of the works embed philosophical musings, suggesting that her practice unfolds as a Heideggerian wandering off the beaten track—a geometric collage exercise carried out within a forest of thought. Beyond these austere structures, only in the depictions of her beloved dog Maodou does a naïve and tender sense of life quietly emerge.

HSIEH Fuyuan: Constructing Islands of Dense Foliage and Translating Classical References Through Layers and Brushstrokes
HSIEH Fuyuan works in contrast to LAN's emphasis on rational speculation. Born in Tainan in 1992, HSIEH received his MFA from the Department of Painting and Calligraphy Arts, National Taiwan University of Arts in 2018, and studied as an exchange student in Japanese painting at the University of Tsukuba in Japan from 2016 to 2017. This experience positioned him at the cultural crossroads of East Asia, enabling him to articulate reflections on Taiwan’s historical positioning through an ambiguous and nuanced visual language. He introduces the digital “image layer” mindset into classical gongbi painting processes, which involve highly detailed brushstrokes, and challenges the conventional perception of gongbi painting as purely delicate and aesthetic.

This exhibition features 16 two-dimensional works created in ink and acrylic, including five new pieces from 2026 shown publicly for the first time. Together, they trace the arc of HSIEH’s creative trajectory over the past six years: a shift from meticulous brushwork to freer gesture, and from orderliness toward deconstruction. At the core of the exhibition is the Grassy Land series, in which finely rendered, densely detailed leaf forms are used as elemental units, layered into vast, island-like landscapes. Also featured is a series of digital sketches produced with tablet drawing software, where he intentionally retains the raw, fragmented, and at times conflicting traces of the digital creative process. Transforming monumental landscape compositions into light, contemporary experiments, these works reimagine Northern Song masterpieces such as Guo Xi's Early Spring and Li Tang’s Wind in Pines Among a Myriad of Valleys.

His recent 2026 work Green Born from Torn Silk signals a further shift toward a more direct, scriptural mode of expression. In terms of line and structure, he faithfully renders the self through individually distinct, curved, and hesitant brushstrokes, while boldly dividing the pictorial space with vertical lines running from top to bottom. Meanwhile, mint green, lotus pink, and off-white classical pale rosy tones are introduced to convey emotion within the composition. This approach not only seeks a balance between order and chaos, but also encourages viewers to engage with the work through their own lived experience.

LAN Zhaoxing pursues a ''fixed point'' grounded in historical depth and philosophical contemplation, using structure as a means to resist worldly noise, while HSIEH Fuyuan perceives “flux” within accumulated layers and the tides of the era, engaging the ambiguity of reality through deconstructive thought.

The two artists—one still and one in motion, one rooted in tradition and the other pushing boundaries—together demonstrate the resilience of art shaped by thought. Eslite Gallery invites visitors into the exhibition space to roam between philosophical cabins and intricate islands, and witness how the most compelling truths are distilled within the shifting coordinates of contemporary life.