Preface from National Curator

National Chin-Yi University Art Center has successfully held fifteen professional art exhibitions since its establishment. After several graphic art exhibitions, our center held the Three Artists’ Exhibition of Taiwanese Sculpture, which combined art pieces made from different perspectives and materials by three artists last year as the fourteenth activity. The exhibition was well received and appreciated by students and faculty from our university and guests from outside. They expected our center could curate more diverse exhibitions of three-dimensional art. Therefore, our center invited three sculptors, Wen-Wu Lee, Ding-Hong Chen, and Kuan-Hsun Chen to exhibit their work at “Singing Arts with Efforts: Joint Sculpture Exhibition with Three Artists” as the new page of our center in the year 2023. Moreover, the exhibition displaying diverse styles of art pieces by these three well-known Taiwanese artists is expected to provide a broad and colorful experience of visual arts and a learning opportunity of aesthetics.

The artworks by Wen-Wu Lee are one of a kind. The essence of his artworks reveals the impact of learning from a Japanese teacher, particularly the experience of woodcarving birds and flowers on transoms. This experience and the training in Chinese painting formed a solid cultural base for his wood sculptures and, in turn, became his unique style. His works look like paintings from a distant view, but woodcarvings with a close look. The works of Wen-Wu Lee incorporate the spirit of religion and mythology and demonstrate the ethereal temperament and the Eastern cultural aesthetics. The works of Ding-Hong Chen (whose real name has the same pronunciation with a different character) combine the realistic and the abstract. Based on his creative experience for over 40 years, his works represent the profane pleasure from simplicity, plumpness, and innocence. Besides, created through simple yet exquisite skills, his works employ the artist’s understanding and passion of life to conceive a unique and captivating prospect. Also taking wood as his major material, Kuan-Hsun Chen constantly focuses on exploring and realizing life in his creation. In the territory of the meaning of life, Kuan-Hsun Chen combines different materials such as ceramics and brings the shape and connotation of his artwork to another peak. His works enable the viewers to realize the transience of life.

    The exhibition “Singing Arts with Efforts: Joint Sculpture Exhibition with Three Artists” has 32 pieces of work. Each piece displays its own aesthetics and prospect. The Art Center at National Chin-Yi University of Technology appreciates every artist’s generous contribution to this exhibition.

 Director of the Art Center of National Chin-Yi University of Technology

Chen, Xian-Lian