Artwork Appreciation
CHEN Shao-Yen’s oil painting, One Hundred Hole Window 101, made use of large quantities of black, gray, and white tones, and is devoid of any other color. Dense flowing lines swim across the canvas, presenting a forced yet liberated style unique to this work. The general theme is composed of densely packed iron gratings observed from a narrow alleyway which had become part of the residential landscape in the area, with the stacked gratings forming a wall that covers and breaks up the building’s outlines. The artist used an upward-looking perspective to illustrate tightly packed iron grilles of same or similar sizes and shapes, building an imposing wall that disrupts the architecture’s true outlines, forcing people to go pass the barrier in order to observe its original form. The grilles also act as a layer through which the architecture must breathe with. By using simple color combinations, CHEN Shao-Yen has distilled a powerful visual effect, achieved through his flexible use of lines moving freely upon the canvas so that the viewers may appreciate this mundane yet unique urban scenery.