The Fourth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

MICHAEL MING HONG LIN THE PAINTED GARDEN Michael Ming Hong Lin transforms architectural spaces into painted gardens of overwhelming delight, flooding the interior surfaces of heroically charged buildings with vivid ornamentations featuring amplified flowers, foliage and phoenixes. The visual references are sourced in humble beginnings - the fabrics traditionally found in Taiwanese homes as honeymoon bed– covers and pillows. By superimposing magnified versions of these textiles on the authoritative domain of institutional architecture, Lin crafts new meanings w ithin these spaces. He plays the interlocutor, and subverts expectations of what these formal spaces are built to accommodate, what ideas they are intended to reinforce, and how visitors are expected to feel and behave within their confines. Stealthily employing the elements of parody and surprise, Lin toys with hierarchies. Although his imagery is drawn from everyday life, to unfamiliar eyes it appears fabulous and splendid. The artist disturbs notions of the exotic and the famil iar and plays upon ideas surrounding the exoticisation of ordinary materials in extraordinary circumstances . He forces monumental architecture and everyday fabrics to meet in unlikely and provocative juxtapositions. His placements within buildings are strategically located. Rather than selecting grand sites for his interventions, he often chooses inconsequential spaces and transitional zones. For APT 2002, one of Lin's sites of intervention occurs within an in-between space not usually considered a prime location for art - the cafe. This site is a transit zone between outside and inside, a liminal space of entrances and exits, where glassed boundaries are transparent and penetrable. Here visitors may relax, read, eat, gaze outward or peer inward; they can reflect upon what has just occurred, consider what might yet be experienced, and delight in the role of voyeur without censure. The public art museum was originally envisaged as an environment within which visitors were expected to undergo certain experiences - educative, enlightening, perhaps even awe-inspiring. When hallways, floors, structural walls and other functional interior spaces are overlaid with Lin's lurid patterning, the alliances between authority and public architecture are disputed. Interventions are made across divisions that demarcate high and low art, useless and useful spaces, and public and private domains. Gaston Bachelard has written about the subtle changes that occur within spaces through the act of dwelling: The function of inhabiting constitutes the link between full and empty. A living creature fills an empty refuge, images inhabit, and all corners are haunted, if not inhabited. ' In Lin's spaces, resplendent, florid patterns are transposed over utilitarian surfaces. The arresting visual impact of the transformation invites visitors to linger unexpectedly. In some instances, such as his project Kiasma day bed 2001, Lin creates intimate rest zones - sites for stillness, daydreaming and temporary dwelling. These are spaces created expressly for doing nothing, and where time passes slowly. 70 APT2002 Top: Untitled cigarette break 1999 Upholstered chairs, pentalite paint on wood Dimensions variable Collection: The artist Centre: Taiwanese fabric, source for Gallery 5 wall, OAG 09.72.02 - 07.2703 2002 Collection: The artist Below: Working drawing for Gallery 5 wall, QAG 09. 72.02 - 07.2703 2002 Collection :The artist Michael Ming Hong Lin Taiwan b.1964 /CA Taipei 5.27- 8.26.2007 2001 Penta lite paint Courtesy: The artist