Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei

Born in Tainan, Taiwan in 1983, Shu-Kai Lin graduated from the Department of Fine Arts, Taipei National University of the Arts, from which he also earned a master’s degree. He currently lives in Tainan.

Graphic art and spatial installation are the staple forms of Lin’s oeuvre. Tainan, the place in which Lin came of age, is an ancient capital bristling with temples, serpentine lanes, and religious totems. The artist internalized these visual elements and spatial experiences, dismantling and reassembling the constituents of his personal life and epiphanies, thereby excavating the symbols in a claborate style gradually formed fantastic building that embody the cities and islands in his imagination, which resulted in his sui generis art series The Balcony City Civilization. Apart from creating images with religious implications, the artist seeks to turn the wooden molds left in his father’s factory into models of futuristic city, so as to reveal the myriad metamorphoses of cities and islands.

He has been invited to international and domestic large-scale exhibitions at Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Asian Culture Center (South Korea) and Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (Japan). He has also worked as an artist-in-residence and presented his works in Germany, the United States, the Netherlands, and Thailand.

Born in 1996 in Tainan, Taiwan, Tzu-Ying Chen is an arts freelancer, and she is also currently pursuing a master’s degree in Arts and Design at the National Taipei University of Education. Having worked close to three years in a commercial gallery, she has experience in art administration and has also interned at an artist-in-residence organization focusing on educational promotion, with additional practical experience acquired from working on-site at art fairs. With extensive experience in exhibition planning and implementation, Chen is also a prolific writer on arts and culture.

Her research interests include visual studies and studies on social participatory art. Her latest involvement includes working on Fifteen Years’ Traces #Global Store Project #Back To Chiayi – Takahiko Suzuki Solo Exhibition and writing for Carrying Capacity – It’s Not Just the Artist's 30th Anniversary: Shu-Kai Lin Solo Exhibition.

In the digital age, the formation of an urban civilization construes and symbolizes the intertwining state of time and space in the real world. The increasing physical feelings of cumbersomeness and silence in the face of the real world also insinuate contemporary people’s desire for physical and mental ease, giving rise to a whimsical illustrated spiritual treatise. Taking on the role of a guide, the artist reconsiders and contributes to the meaning of civilization and contemporary life in urbanization while offering imaginative thoughts and anticipation for civilization in the future.