Artwork Appreciation
Artist Chen Shiau-Peng is good at observing the underlying rules of things and expressing them in geometric and abstract forms. The aesthetic appeal of rectangular grids is strongly connected with their connotations—not only peace, but also power and control. Here, on a series of four canvases, the artist borrowed ideas from Peter Halley, Sarah Morris, Piet Mondrian, and one of her own past works and recreated them with subtle differences in the images, which creates a sense of authenticity, but like political slogans of during election campaigns, they combine fantasy and reality. The work composed of 25 squares was based on one of Chen’s past works. Its 18 colors represent different political parties in Taiwan, and the blank squares are reserved for the artist to fill in for new political parties in the future. The surfaces of the canvases look like flat colors, but Chen actually painted all of them; she also painted the frames. If you look closely, you can see the texture, which retains Chen’s emotional and physical state of the moment of painting.