The Real Jardín Botánico of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture of Taiwan and the Economic and Cultural Office of Taipei in Spain, presents in Madrid the exhibition Chronicles of Stone and Feather: Duo of Taiwanese Contemporary Art, which showcases the work of Pu-Chun Teng and Mia Lu, two Taiwanese artists with very different formal languages, but whose sensibilities resonate in harmony.
The exhibition, which will remain open from June 24 to August 30 at the Villanueva Pavilion of the Real Jardín Botánico, proposes to examine how these two Taiwanese creators, rooted in local experience and in dialogue with the current context, carry out a transcultural translation and reconfiguration through formal resources such as ink, photography, installation, and documentary manuscripts, among other mixed media.
Pu-Chun Teng, who with ink dots engraves landscapes of “firm rock” in strange territories, and Mia Liu, who, with paper, unfolds the lightness of “feathers in flight,” create a true visual symphony, with the former grounding his work in the earth, while the latter seems to make it levitate through the sky. Hence, the exhibition takes stone and feather as coordinates, thus outlining the dual perspective of both artists on life, culture, and the cosmos.
Some of the exhibited works stem from “traditional ink painting,” to which both artists – belonging to different generations – give a new contemporary expression. The works reveal a deep fusion between Eastern aesthetic tradition and Western contemporary forms. It is not just a technical turn, but a conscious deconstruction of inherited paradigms. Through this polyphonic narrative, the exhibition aims to articulate the unique system of aesthetic references of contemporary Taiwanese art in the horizon of globalization.
After years of residence in Hualien (Taiwan), the rocky landscape of this region has become for Pu-Chun Teng the foundation of his imagination. Through the detailed stroke of ink dots and fine textures, originally tranquil plants and stones transform into landscapes in metamorphosis that, through deformations, twists, and superpositions, become scenes that traverse the margins of the real.
Similarly, the breakwater blocks and coastal stones of Hualien are also approached by Mia Liu through the practice of “landscape painting” (landscape painting), combining photography and landscape. On the surface of plants and rocks, she organizes dots and lines in a repetitive, prolific, and continuous manner, constructing a unique trajectory of perception. Each dot is independent and yet interconnected, ultimately converging in the artist’s distinctive poetic sensitivity.
