Tim Yip, born in Hong Kong in 1967, is a multidisciplinary artist who works mainly in the fields of film, costume design, visual art, and contemporary art. He received professional training in photography at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. In his early career years, he worked in scene painting and as a photographer for the Hong Kong magazine City Entertainment. In 1986, renowned film director Tsui Hark offered him a job as art director for the movie A Better Tomorrow. Since then, Tim Yip and film have been inseparable.
In 1987, Tim Yip was gaining more and more recognition in the Hong Kong film industry. Despite that, he put a hold on his career and traveled alone across Europe in search of inspiration and spirituality. After returning to Hong Kong, his artistic ideology and persistence silenced him for approximately seven years(??I’m not sure what he stopped doing for seven years. “Silenced” is the wrong word. Maybe “kept him from pursuing gallery and museum exhibitions for approximately seven years”? This last sentence can be dropped without hurting the article.). In 1992, he participated in the shooting of the film Temptation of a Monk and became acquainted with the lead actor Hsing-kuo Wu. Tim Yip won the Best Art Direction Award at the Golden Horse Awards for the film. Afterwards, he returned fully committed to the world of film, theater, and television, welcomed with support and recognition.
Tim Yip is best known for his work on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which won an Academy Award for Best Art Direction in 2001. He became the first Chinese artist to obtain such an award.
The glory of the Academy Awards brought Tim Yip even more job and exhibition offers. Since 2002, he has held solo exhibitions in Taipei, Holland, France, the United States, Spain, Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. The content of the exhibitions focuses mainly on costume design; he successfully uses them to promote the concept of “Neo-Orientalism” aesthetics worldwide. Behind the glory, the high expectations Tim Yip has for personal creativity never diminished. To fulfill his artistic aspirations, he conducted two solo exhibitions in Beijing: Illusion of Silence in 2007 and Carefree in 2009. These exhibitions served as Tim Yip’s announcement of his determination to migrate from applied art to contemporary art. In 2010, the Summer Holiday exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei is his largest, most complete, and purest exhibition yet.
No matter whether it is theater, film, costume design, or pure art creation, Tim Yip insists that his works follow the ideology and architecture of “Neo-Orientalism” to the smallest of details. Hsing-kuo Wu once said: “Tim Yip came all the way from a poor artist who barely had money for coffee to a well-respected Academy Award winner for Best Art Direction. His journey has been hard and bitter. The amazing thing is that he never abandoned self-fulfillment or the pursuit of perfection. In every media – mainstream, experimental, large or small – he always worked diligently, and continuously read books to challenge and elaborate his personal philosophy.” This description of Tim Yip gives an insight into the artist behind the reputation and glory. Let this exhibition be an occasion for the audience to obtain a new and better understanding of Tim Yip.