Acton, MA – Contemporary Arts International (CAI), a nonprofit art center, announces the interdisciplinary exhibition in CAI’s Gallery. Curated by Viktor Lois, the exhibition entitled “Before the End of the Journey: Paintings of My Older Brother” by Taiwanese artist Ming-Te Tai will be open to the public from July 8 to Oct 8, 2018. This is our anchor show of the year. An Opening Reception and Artist Talk will be held on July 8 at 2:00PM.
As the artist’s statement stated: “… the year 2012 was the last period of my late older brother with a terminal
oral cancer. I looked at his weak and fractured cheeks and body, and felt the
urge to record the last of him in images. However, the section from his nasal
cavity to his neck is bandaged with gauze with blood oozing out, I could not
bring myself to lift the cold camera and press the shutter to the brutal scene.
I started drawing his portrait on the thin wrapping paper from his medical
supply kits. Needless to say, my mind was filled with chaotic thoughts and the
anxiety on our rapidly approaching eternal separation... Two years later, the doodling was transformed into this painting series.
Tai writes
further: “…My older brother and I were 17
years apart, our relationship is in many ways like that of a father and son.
His build was burly, his character with a strong sense of righteousness, he
often took a leadership role among his peers, and frequently got into fights
with local gangsters when he was young and unruly. Even though they were
outnumbered ten to one, he persisted in the bloodshed until the end. His job
took him traveling constantly until an illness drove him back to his hometown
to become a ‘good citizen’. I marveled at his value of life. To me, the
suffering state of his predicament was no different from that of a saint!
Paintings of my Older Brother perhaps are autobiographical revealing my fear in
facing my own end in the future.”
The series, though a portrait of the artist’s brother, is obviously not
a depiction of his appearance but the apprehension of his vigilance, courage,
and witness of the easy attitude he beheld when facing excruciating pain.
When asked about the process of creating these paintings, Tai
articulates that this series was first painted with trembling hands when Tai
directly faced his brother and sketched him. Based on the draft, after the
brother passed away, a large number of interpretive finer sketches were
produced. Tai freely employed diverse materials to express himself in various
stages of anxiety and despair. Tai explored the integration of acrylics and
mixed materials for presentation. Through acrylics and the cutting, covering,
filling in color, and blooming on vinyl cuttings, the resulting imagery was
extremely similar to that of woodcut prints, expressing the harshness, strength
and life-like movement of the figure in the painting. In the dark-colored area
with moist ink, the symbol of time delivers the reference and inference of the
Paintings of “My Brother” heading to the end of his Life. The linear cut marks
overlap and intersect, vacillating between certainty and uncertainty. They
weave the direct contact and treatment of the separation and pain.
The emotional imagery in the show resonates the famous print/painting
“Scream” by Edvard Munch, not only the subject matter of expressing the artist’s inner thoughts and strong feeling, but also its swirling
movement, rhythm and intensity. Munch’s extreme
despair completely override the painterly application, the “Scream” hits the
viewer with a solely direct feeling of anxiety. As Munch’s diaries read:
"I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly,
the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling
unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black
fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear.
Then I heard the enormous infinite scream of nature." Like Munch, Tai
Ming-Te’s paintings express not merely psychological agony but also physical
suffering on the edge of insanity. Munch is from Norway, Tai is from Taiwan,
the common denominator is their extraordinary human feeling. Through art, they
both evoke the empathy in our hearts.
Both Yin and Viktor have known Tai personally
since 2005, and witnessed the dedication and even the near “madness” in which he
created and lived his art. Touched by Tai’s authenticity and artistic spirit,
they brought this series to New England to share with the Western viewers a
glimpse of this moving and critical Asian artist, whose voice and life journey we
all, at various degrees, one time or other, have encountered.
Tai has obtained his Master of Fine Arts from
the Tainan National University of the
Arts, and is an Associate Professor of Visual Art at
the National Jiayi University in Taiwan.
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