The realistic painting of Huang Chia-Ning

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The realistic painting of Huang Chia-Ning

2019.08.17 - 2019.10.13 KMFA Galleries 401-403, Multi-Purpose Room

Forum for Creativity in Art
Reality & Essence: The realistic painting of Huang Chia-Ning

The realistic oil paintings by Huang Chia-ning do not have intentionally abstruse or ambiguous titles to sound sophisticated and intellectual. Their titles describe exactly what viewers see on the canvas. In addition to such an intuitive, simple, and absolute connection between paintings and titles, there are something more that await to be deciphered in her works. Her precise and lifelike depictions of different scenes convey a sense of simplicity, straightforwardness, and specificity that transcends “visual reality”. Nevertheless, these specific scenes depicted in detail always give viewers a kind of peculiar perception beyond the tiles and the paintings. This perception probably stems from the dialectical cognition of “name” and “substance” in philosophy, which connects viewers with their life experiences in one particular moment.

Artist Statement

The other day, I went into my studio but did not feel like working at all. All of a sudden, I noticed on the table there was a book that I had bought a long while earlier but had only read the introduction part. The book was The Imagination authored by Sartre. After I spent time reading it that day, I had a sudden epiphany about my artistic creation.

In the book, Sartre mentioned how he looked at a sheet of white paper physically existing on the desk. He gazed at it and felt it visually. Then he turned his eyes away from the paper to look at the blank wall nearby instead. On the wall appeared a sheet of grey paper, the visual residue of the white paper….

This short passage with just several sentences alone gave me the epiphany. It described exactly what I had been doing and focusing on.
How come I came to this realization so late in my life?
How come I seemed to have better understanding of my target and direction after this discovery?

I have many sheets of grey paper, a lot of things I want to tell. I paint stories about these sheets of grey paper. However, paradoxically, all the grey paper still comes from the white paper in the really world, right? So, is it actually grey or white? It is difficult to tell. But this is a very interesting question; therefore, it can attract attention and inspire aesthetic perceptions.

On the one hand, the epiphany that day was a delightful surprise for it occurred due to my accidental desire to read that book. On the other, it was a regrettable revelation making me wonder if the explosion of knowledge and information nowadays has made it more difficult for people to focus on or acquire the right food for thought really helpful for them. How can an artist like me find the right food for thought and use it in the right way and in the right place? I think this is something that cannot be forced. Anything in life can become an intended accident, which we can leverage to not only challenge fossilized dogmas and thinking but also have fun challenging ourselves. My artistic creation is to create something that can even surprise myself. Pushing my own limit is what I always strive to do.

2019/6 Huang Chia-ning

Supervised by: Bureau of Cultural Affairs, Kaohsiung City Government
Organized by: Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts
Coordinated by: LIN & LIN GALLERY
Curator: Bo-Cheng Shen
Artist: Huang Chia-Ning
Appointed Deformaldehyde Coating Sponsor: HOPAX

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Exhibition

The realistic painting of Huang Chia-Ning

A Hundred Imaginations of Museum Architecture

Upcoming│Ethereal Bloom– The Luminous Paradise of Chang Li-Yeh

Ocean in Us: Southern Visions of Women Artists Part II: Highlights from the KMFA Collection