Artwork Appreciation
In TSAI Yi-Chieh’s painting Penthouse Rooftop View II, a small rectangular portion of a house is visible, with a tidy lawn and a small tree planted in the rooftop.
Tsai sedulously imitates the flawless scenery of a model home. Such scenery, meticulously manicured, conveys a sense of artificiality, contrasting strongly with the naturalness of the distant mountains and field of flowers. The dissonance between the natural scenery and the manmade landscape in the composition highlights the publicizing effect of housing ads. The name of the painting provoked the imagination, conveying an ironic artistic expression.