CRITICS ON DR. T.F. CHEN’S
ART
“Tsing-fang Chen’s work bears on issues of global
importance today. He is an artist whom history has invited
into a more complex and composite role than the traditional
Modernist role of the master esthetician. Like certain
others of this moment he sees the world of the artist
in a broader sense than that, overlapping with the activities
of the philosopher, the social scientist, the historian,
and the cultural theorist. The present moment in history
needs the mediation of cultural pastiche to facilitate
the emergence of a global art awareness that may prepare
the way for a global sense of human identity. This type
of mediation happens frequently in Chen’s paintings.”
-- Dr. Thomas McEvilley: The Post-Modern Art of T.F.
Chen: “Images of a Global Humanity,” 1990
“Admittedly the Neo-Iconography of Tsing-fang Chen is
not without its enigma. It is complex, demanding, and
ultimately rewarding in a thousand subtle ways. It is
a high tower built with bricks, each of which is recognizable
as a brick with a certifiable geneology. But hold on
– the bricks are not homogenous. They are a multiplicity
of icons from different ages, different cultures, different
original intents. To grasp the tower, even partially,
brings savory visual rewards. Both the emotional heart
and the meditative mind are touched. Chen’s iconography
unfolds. Images of West and East juxtapose and interact
in a profound philosophical synthesis which is simultaneously
beautiful and painfully disturbing. There is a visual
language here, in a bursting of creation, which is not
only richly sensuous but has something to say that humanity
dares not ignore.”
-- Lawrence Jeppson: One Hundred Examples of the Neo-Iconography
of Tsing-fang Chen, 1990
“Chen’s paintings make a very good case for his theories
with their brilliant reworkings of earlier masterpieces,
each skillfully painted in the style of the particular
artist he is emulating, yet simultaneously transformed
by coloristic variations and other subtle touches that
belong to him alone… Unlike other artists who ‘appropriate’,
Dr. T. F. Chen, a scholar, a philosopher, and a veritable
‘school’ unto himself, creates powerful, highly original
paintings that stand on their own, as major works in
their own right.”
-- Ed McCormack: “Dr. T. F. Chen, a ‘school’ unto himself,”
Artspeak, 16 April 1989
“After having overcome the first shock of seeing some
images which seemed so irreverent to the memory of Vincent
van Gogh, we completely changed our minds and spent
hours enjoying the illustrations in that catalogue.
Chen’s paintings are so full of fantasy and humor and
display such technical mastery that we are extremely
pleased to have made their acquaintance.”
-- Dr. Jan Hulsker, a leading world authority on van
Gogh and former Cultural Minister & Director-General
of Cultural Affairs for the Netherlands, in a letter
to Lucia Gallery, 1991
|
