Andante, a musical tempo marking, indicates a passage is to be played at a relaxed, graceful speed described as a "moderate walking pace." By echoing such symbolic, steady motion, this exhibition celebrates how artist Liu Sheng-Jung (1928-1985) moves freely between the realms of painting, music, and pigeon keeping as well as his many literal moves between Taiwan and Japan. Moreover, "andante" resonates with how Liu Sheng-Jung pulls the unconstrained sentiment of music onto the canvas, combining traditional culture with modern elements.
 
Born in Liuying, Tainan, Liu Sheng-Jung's family nurtured his artistic development from a young age, fostering a talent and appreciation for the violin. Despite the fact that Liu Sheng-Jung had received little formal art education, he was inspired by his uncle, Liu Chi-Hsiang, and in the post-war 1950s, he began painting, creating many works of figurative art. The 1960s marked a turning point in Liu Sheng-Jung's creative career. He set his sights on the vanguard of modern art at the time, making a clear shift to abstraction in which he created rhythmic works full of dynamic, unconstrained brushwork. After a close friend's death in 1965, Liu Sheng-Jung began to bring together elements from local Taiwanese spiritual worship to create an extraordinary collage from burnt joss paper (also referred to as "spirit money"). Such collages provided Liu Sheng-Jung a medium in which he attempted to capture the unpredictable consumption of the joss paper by the flames. Then in 1967, Liu Sheng-Jung and his family settled in Japan where he began exploring the infinite space available within the canvas. Up until his death in 1985, his work was characterized by circles and collages exploring the varying forms of burnt joss paper. 
 
This exhibition presents important pieces from several major stages of Liu Sheng-Jung's career. Furthermore, by exploring documents and letters from the late artist, this exhibition presents a never-before-seen side of Liu Sheng-Jung the artist, including his love for music, pigeon raising, his family, and his many connections with art colleagues from Taiwan and Japan.
 
Over the course of his many travels--from moving to Japan with his family as a child, returning to Taiwan as a budding artist, traveling frequently between Taiwan and Japan in pursuit of artistic inspiration, and to finally settling in Okayama, Japan--Liu Sheng-Jung took in vast quantities of new ideas from the art worlds of Japan, Europe, and the United States. It can be said that Liu Sheng-Jung's creations reflect the real-time development of abstract art in Taiwan and Japan and act as a bridge between the two contexts. Perhaps more importantly, such insight allows Liu Sheng-Jung's work to project a rich, colorful, resplendent force written in his very own abstract language.
 
This exhibition has also invited contemporary artist Lee Li-Chung to examine the documents left behind by the "God of Pigeon Racing," as Liu Sheng-Jung was once dubbed, from the perspective of both researcher and contemporary creator. A pigeon fancier himself, such an exploration allows Lee Li-Chung and Liu Sheng-Jung to interact across time and space in order to present a seldom-presented side of Liu Sheng-Jung and the historical context of the time.