Abstracting Taiwan's Natural Environment
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S T Y L E 生活時尚 15 TAIPEI TIMES • WEDNESDAY, MAY 27, 2009 [ ART JOURNAL ] PHOTO: BLOOMBERG Abstracting Taiwan’s natural environment The Yeh Chu-sheng solo exhibit at Leisure Art Center provides a brief introduction to the artist’s oeuvre and the genre of abstract art BY NOAH BUCHan Back STAFF REPORTER CONTINUED FROM P14 Although he has a local hip-hop posse, D12, that he remained loyal to (and produced) when he grew famous, he hardly raps about friends or bstract art is notoriously the action above the water’s community; Eminem and Slim Shady are loners, difficult to appreciate surface. A small bird balances estranged from virtually everyone. Relapse plays because it dispenses with on the edge of a thick blade of like the work of someone who’s been long isolated, realism in favor of dark grass that seems to have seeing only his family, his pills and a TV; it’s not as nonrepresentational exploded from the center of a funny as past albums. Aexpression and often requires a pod in Flower · Zen (4) (花 · 禪 Both Eminem and Dr Dre thought hard deep understanding of an artist’s 4). The painting, which is the about how Eminem should re-emerge. And both psychological or emotional state. only representational canvas concluded that the world wanted more Slim Shady. Although Yeh Chu-sheng’s (葉 on display, is reminiscent of “I talked to my son about it,” said Dr Dre, “and he 竹盛) oil and acrylic on canvas Chinese flower-and-bird painting was like: ‘The kids want to hear him act the fool. paintings can be said to fall into both in its monochromatic use We want to hear him be crazy, we want to hear him this category, the Leisure Art of color and the simplicity of its be Slim Shady and nothing else.’” Center (悠閒藝術中心) presents background. Relapse sets out to recapture the audience his works in a way makes them In Flower · Zen (8) (花 · 禪 for his previous studio albums by presenting the easily accessible. 8), Yeh takes the viewer in a familiar Eminem, which is to say, a ruckus of Entitled Infinity, the different direction in terms of the multiple personalities. “The album walks a fine small exhibition displays 11 application of paint, use of color line,” Mathers said. “My fans, and people who medium-sized paintings that Yeh and mode of representation. A genuinely listen to hip-hop and love it for the art completed in the past year, with mass of dappled yellows fills form, they know what’s Eminem, what’s Marshall two works dating from the 1990s, the canvas, creating a dynamic and what’s Shady.” and provides a brief survey of rhythm between the malachite On the album, Eminem is self-consciously the artist’s interests over the and emerald green background autobiographical when he rhymes about himself past decade: Taiwan’s natural — a combination of color that — sometimes painfully frank, sometimes self- environment and the natural indicates growth and decay. mocking. “Not only is honesty one of the biggest cycle of growth and decay. Ecosystem (16) (環境 · 生態 parts of recovery,” Mathers said. “I’m blessed While abstract art’s visual 16) reminded me of the cliffs at enough to be able to have an outlet.” language is sometimes frustrating Yehliou (野柳), on the northern The song Deja vu chronicles that night in because it lacks a clear visual coast. A rectangle of red ochre December 2007 and the escalating drug habit that led reference to the phenomenal color stretches across the lower up to it, with Eminem offering and then demolishing world, the center compares quarter of the canvas above his old excuses; he rhymes “pneumonia” with and contrasts Yeh’s works of which is a large splat of black “bologna.” In Beautiful, a grudgingly self-affirming patches and swaths of seemingly superimposed over a background song built on a power ballad, he wonders aloud random lines to other abstract of a tempestuous grayish-black whether he’ll ever rap again; he started writing it artists and supplemented the wash, which forms the upper during the first day of one attempt at rehab, alone exhibit with a section devoted two thirds of the canvas. with a pen in a hospital room. to Yeh’s preliminary sketches. The other third is given over The album revisits Slim Shady’s usual obsessions These realistic studies of stems, to another rectangle that itself so thoroughly that it sometimes threatens to seeds, flowers and other natural looks like a canvas, painted in a become a rerun. It isn’t the first time he’s rapped phenomena illuminate the non- combination of pale yellow and about abducting women, or used the sound effect representational canvases. It is brown. At the top of this canvas- of duct tape peeling off the roll. Eminem once again advised that anyone visiting the within-a-canvas, yellow powder mocks Christopher Reeve, who died in 2004; he gallery take a look at them first pigment is combined with red has lines about slightly stale targets like Britney because they provide a solid and blue twine and juxtaposes Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Kim Kardashian and Sarah starting point from which to the black sun in the center of Palin. “Once he makes a painting, once he lays a approach the main works. the canvas. lyric down, it’s impossible to get him to change it,” In Marine · Creature (海洋 · 生 Like many of Yeh’s other Dr Dre said. “If there’s a couple of lines he says on 物), Yeh paints the canvas dark paintings, he here uses a record that’s not relevant today, it’s, ‘No, that was blue and creates texture by the powdered pigment as a means that painting. That was for that moment.’” addition, here and there, of blobs of replicating the texture of After five years’ absence, Eminem still looms of ultramarine, pools of black and mountains while a thickening EXHIBITION NOTES: over hip-hop; the rapper Asher Roth devotes veins of peacock blue — as if to agent, applied here and there, a song, As I Em, to complaining about being suggest different watery depths. ripples the acrylic paint in a WHAT: Infinity — Yeh Chu-sheng solo exhibition compared to Eminem because both are white. Swirling within this aquarium of manner reminiscent of waves. WHERE: Leisure Art Center (悠閒藝術中心), 6F, 222, Zhongxiao E Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北 But We Made You, the second single from abstraction are elongated lines Although brief, the Infinity 市忠孝東路四段222號6樓) Relapse, had middling success on Top 40 radio; painted in cadmium yellow, some exhibit provides an excellent WHEN: Until May 31. Open daily from 10am to 8pm; closed Mondays. Call (02) 2778-0238 some references were dated. Dom Theodore, tinged with white. The shapes overview of Yeh’s works and, ON THE NET: www.leisureart.com.tw vice-president for Top 40 pop programming at vaguely appear as an anchor, fish more generally, to the genre CBS Radio, had mixed expectations for Relapse and cylindrical ocean creatures. of abstract art. The exhibit because Eminem’s hits had always been his Marine Ecology (2) (海洋 · 生 stands out for combining the humorous ones. “This album tends to be a little 態 2) features fewer creatures, representational with the non- darker,” he said. “It’s still edgy, but not in a fun but continues the theme of representational, realism with Yeh Chu-sheng’s Flower · Zen (2), above, and Flower · Zen (7), left. PHOTOS COURTESY OF LEISURE ART CENTER way. But I’d never write him off. You’d be hard ocean blues, with the addition of the abstract, and thus enabling pressed to find someone more talented.” branches of purples and pinks viewers to use the former as Despite his nine Grammy Awards, many MTV that connote coral. a means of gaining a deeper appearances and tens of millions of albums sold, Other canvases move understanding of the latter. Eminem hasn’t put himself on the celebrity circuit. “If it could just be about the music, I would only do the music,” he said. “I don’t hate the limelight, but I don’t like it.” In the songs, Slim Shady still reacts to celebrities not like a fellow star but like a consumer stoking his crushes and fantasies from images on the airwaves. He just happens to be more extreme. Huang’s mission: to seek out new art forms Confessions and broken taboos aren’t Eminem’s only concerns; he’s also a virtuoso of phonetics. His raps rhyme internal vowel sounds along with the syllables that end words, and he’ll let a chain of Three years after leaving Taipei for Beijing, sounds take him wherever free-association might lead. “I’m taking celebrity names just out of the Huang Chih-yang returns temporarily air, or just putting them in a hat and mixing them with a show that offers a hint as to why he left up and drawing a name,” he said. “If your name happens to rhyme with something good, then you BY BLAKE CARTER might get it too.” STAFF REPORTER Word sounds are the genesis of Insane, a song on Relapse that accuses a stepfather of raping him as a child. “It’s pretty much all fiction,” he said. Viewers say the works look like end and bristly at the other — that exploratory than derivative. “It’s a perfect example of a rhyme gone bad.” “giant, squid-like pods” or a fruit have long been Huang’s trademark.