Tseng Hsing-Ping
(Review Committee Member for the Western Painting Exhibition of the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts; Preparatory Committee Member for the National Fine Arts Exhibition)
A “Passionate” Contemplation of the Will of Mountains and Sea
Written by Wang Muti
Professor Tseng Hsing-Ping (born in 1945) has built an artistic career that may be read as a deeply affectionate chronicle of the natural landscapes of Taiwan’s eastern coast. The artistic achievement of his exhibited work, Gazing Passionately at the Waves Before My Eyes, lies in its perfect fusion of “materiality” and “state of mind.”
1. The Alchemy of Ink-and-Color Interfusion
In the terminology of art criticism, Tseng Hsing-Ping’s technique may be described as an “extension of the textural field of ink and color.” He skillfully makes use of the “skeleton” of traditional ink painting and the “flesh” of Western watercolor.
- The construction of the reef: He employs dry brush and forceful, dense ink to establish on the paper a hard geometric structure resembling granite. This technique is not merely realism, but also a material declaration concerning “permanence.”
- The dynamic texture of the spray: At the boundary where the sea waves meet the rocks, he uses a special stain-wash technique to express the randomness of splashing sea foam. This aesthetics of chance forms a powerful visual tension with the inevitability of the rocks.
2. “Passionate Devotion” as a Phenomenological Reduction
“To gaze with passionate devotion” is not merely an emotional revelation, but also a phenomenological practice. Through long observation of the Pacific Ocean, the artist dissolves the self into the object. This state of “the unity of object and self” causes his sea to cease being an objective landscape and instead become a living entity endowed with subjective will.
In Tokyo, an urban core far removed from the sea, Tseng Hsing-Ping’s work is like a wind of life from the South Pacific, awakening the primal senses of city dwellers that have long been sealed off.
