Liang Gallery soon to exhibit “Tranquil Listening—Yu Peng Solo Exhibition" at the Taipei Dangdai Art & Ideas Art Fair｜Press Release

At this year’s Taipei Dangdai Art & Ideas, Liang Gallery is honored to present Mr. Yu Peng’s solo exhibition in memory of the legendary modern ink artist who emerged from Taiwan’s local art scene in the 1980s to become famous around the world.

Yu Peng, whose original name was Wu Kunren, was a Pingyangtang Hakka born in 1955 in Waishuangxi, Taipei. In his youth, he once made a living by setting up a stall in the Taihoku New Park to draw portraits for tourists. This experience honed his ability to paint exquisite and vivid characters.  Yu Peng’s early creative work came at a time when Taiwanese literature was just emerging in the Chinese-speaking world, and there were frequent exchanges between painters and literati. Thus it is that literary thinking is interwoven within the very narrative fabric of Yu Peng’s  paintings. From his paintings, we can experience the idealized fairy world from Tao Yuanming’s Peach Blossom Spring fable. He and his gang of Shuangxi artist friends developed a unique and representative new Taiwanese ink painting style combining the elements of literature, film, tea culture, and folk art in an era when Taiwan had not yet opened up to exchanges with China.

Yu Peng once described himself as an ancient man from the mountains and forests who lived in the city. He used paper for the sky and the earth, continuously painting far-reaching and lingering landscape masterpieces, portraits of fairies and phantoms of ladies. Yu Peng’s down-to-earth characters, contrasting with his slender, endless ink lines, are key hallmarks of his millennial Landscape of Lust and Characters series, and herald an important and representative period for the artist.

Yu Peng’s lifelong artistic achievements have spread far and wide internationally, and he has been invited to participate in important exhibitions such as the Shanghai Biennale, Shenzhen Ink Biennale, Chengdu Biennale, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. His works have been collected by the Hong Kong Museum of Art, the British Museum, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery in Berlin, the Harvard University Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in Chengdu, the Swiss Oregon Art Foundation, the Shanghai Zhangjiang Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Hong Kong M+ Museum.

Exhibition Information

VIP Preview

2024.05.09 (Thu.) 14:00-17:00

Vernissage

2024.05.09 (Thu.) 17:00-20:00

Public View

2024.05.10 (Fri.) 11:00-18:00

2024.05.11 (Sat.) 11:00-18:00

2024.05.11 (Sun.) 11:00-17:30

Venue

Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center, Hall 1 (4th Floor)

No. 1, Jingmao 2nd Road, Nangang District, Taipei City

Booth C02

Exhibiting Artists

于彭 YU Peng