Painting and Existence: Asian Abstract Traveling Exhibition

Whitestone Taipei is proud to present you the traveling exhibition of Asian abstract art – “Painting and Existence”. For this time, we are connecting Gutai art association from Japan who upraised after World War II with Korean monochrome and abstract painting that emerges in the late 80 of China. Being the second stop of the traveling exhibition, we have feature different artists from our first stop at Tang Contemporary Art Gallery. We wish to bring a variety of aspects into Taipei.

Gutai art association represents the art scene in Japan after world war II. Gutai artists were highly influenced by Expressionism of the west. They broke down the traditional form of painting, reconstructed the image and transcended the physical form into spiritual representation. They treated their creative processes as performances where they would discover the dialogue between materiality and its surrounding. Female artist, Atsuko Tanaka, as one of the prominent figure of Gutai art association, presented her “Electric Dress” in 1956 and excited the international art scene. She put her bright line and circles on the flat surface of paper in large size canvas to express the vibration between human and object. Tsuyoshi Maekawa, inspired by the patterns on the ancient pottery found in Ueno, Japan, stitched linen on to the flat canvas and then applied plentiful of color on his works. He dedicated his whole life to the materiality of linen which has become the signature of Tsuyoshi Maekawa.

The purpose of the exhibition is to show and analyze the development of abstract art in East Asia by providing the audiences with a list of important abstract artists found after World War II.