May 12 – July 31, 2021

Each Modern is pleased to announce Brazil-based artist Lin YiHsuan’s latest solo exhibition, “a man called log”. This two-part exhibition presents, for the very first time in Taiwan, a series of recent paintings made in 2020 and 2021. The titular “log” references the important export product of the Pau Brasil tree, which is destroyed, semi-processed, and prepared for distribution around the globe. This changing status – from tree to log - also reflects Lin’s reaction and thoughts on the context of Brazil, and his own art.

Manifesto Antropófago, written by Brazilian poet-novelist Oswald de Andrade in 1928, and the subsequent Tropicália artistic movement of the 1960s, are seen as Renaissances of post-colonial Brazil. The core tenant of these cultural movements was to swallow and digest cultures from Africa, Europe, and Asia, and then synthesize them with Brazil itself to regenerate a new multicultural Brazilian status quo. Having lived in Latin America for years, Lin’s abstract paintings reflect a mixture of Brazilian graffiti and Asian lines, depicting what he has seen from Honduras, Argentina, and his adopted home, Brazil, where he has resided for over a decade. Just like the artistic movements of Brazil, fundamental painting elements, such as lines, circles, and color fields, are constantly combined, juxtaposed, decomposed, and unified in Lin’s work. Gradually, he turns from a wanderer to an inhabitant – or approaches a localized status.

Large and small, roughly cut, Lin’s canvases and paper works may look casual, wild, and unfettered. However, Lin always maintains a delicate sentiment and concept toward painting. From his past attempts with shapes to clearer circles and lines in the latest works, his process questions the essence of painting, on what to paint, and how to paint. For Lin, we do not need to pursue the answer intentionally. He is more concerned with letting life experiences and time occur within the painting naturally; to repeat the familiar and the unfamiliar, the gentle, and the brutal in this process. As seen in “Do whatever you want here”(2021), Lin covers an initial work, reworking the surface with obvious rectangles, setting it apart.

During the peak of the pandemic in 2020, Lin continued to paint while in lockdown in Brazil. For the artist, time seemed to flow at a slower pace, and his ambiguous shapes slowly turned into defined symbols. In “Leaves at 1 PM”(2020), we can see multiple green circles jumping with rhythm – the leaves are presented with an illusionary appearance. Beneath strong visual motifs, Lin’s backgrounds are an abstract rendering of a landscape. “Lençóis Maranhenses“(2020) portrays the unique desert lake scene of Lençóis Maranhenses National Park in Brazil, the blue-white sky and water are under the spiral lines of the dunes and waves.

Adorned with black lines, “le cru et le cuit”(2020 - 2021) references French anthropologist Claude Lévi- Strauss(1908 - 2009)’s Mythologiques: Le Cru et le Cuit, first published in 1964. As a result of different surroundings, trees will always adapt themselves to grow branches and leaves in varied shapes most suited for their environment. In this series, Lin utilizes this concept of “le cru”(the raw) which he takes to indicate an unpracticed skill, and “le cuit”(the cooked) which indicates a skill he is familiar with – to paints his staggered tree branches. In “Pieces of sky hanging on the treetops”(2021) and “jabuticaba”(2021), we can also see the twisted,
maze-like tree boughs with yellow leaves standing out from an angular sky.

Indeed, Lin’s abstract painting is about the landscape. But the foreign land is no longer what it looks like, and it is not the South America we expect, either. This landscape which belongs to Brazil is now beyond native Brazil, instead of responding to the multicultural history of the country and the artist. Perhaps, his paintings are as rough, rebellious, and poetically free as the Beat Generation. Perhaps, using the term “cannibalism” is a kind of counterattack to exportation the “log” back to the Western world, which would otherwise use such a term to depreciate Brazil. What Lin has aroused is not only an imagination or interpretation of a specific place. What he has achieved belongs to the world, and sits within the invasion and mixing of cultures.

Lin YiHsuan, born in Yilan, Taiwan in 1985, graduated from Taipei National University of the Arts. In 2009, he moved to Latin America and lived in Honduras, Argentina, and eventually Brazil. Lin’s recent important solo shows include “Sob o Céu Estrelado”(2019) at Ateliê Fidalga, São Paulo, “We are Turtles”(2019) at Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei, “Straw”(2018) at Each Modern, Taipei, “Baby Danger Baby Extraño”(2017) at Basin, Philadelphia, “Argh. Hippos.”(2017) at aura gallery Taipei, Taipei, and “A Chicken and a dog, they walk” at Jeffrey Stark, New York. His recent group shows include “Out of Summer”(2019) at Simon Lee Gallery, Hong Kong, “Li Yuan- chia and the Homages to”(2019) at Each Modern, Taipei, “Poetic Gaze : Yilan Art Museum Collection Exhibition”(2018) at Yilan Art Museum, Yilan, “Paper in Practice”(2016) at Moran Moran, Los Angeles, “Seize the Life: Contemporary Writing and Painting”(2016) at Double Square Gallery, Taipei, “That’s the neighbor, always dressing these boulders in the yard”(2014) at Suzanne Geiss, New York, “Olhae e escolher”(2013) at Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz, Sao Paulo, and “Drawing Now: Contemporary Taiwanese Drawing” at Hong–Gah Museum, Taipei. Lin also participated residency programs at Ateliê Fidalga, Sao Paulo(2019), ISCP, New York(2019), and 18th Street Art Center(2013).