The Fourth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

MICHAEL MING HONG LIN Taipei Fine Art Museum 9.8.2000 - 1. 72001 2000 Pentalite paint on wood, pillows 3600 x 1600cm Photograph: Rhana Devenport HANDMADE, HOMEMADE Lin consciously references the homemade; he uses motifs derived from ordinary household applications, generated by and through domestic textile design and fabrication, an activity mostly undertaken by women. By highlighting this often anonymous art form, Lin addresses notions of authorship and originality. He rejects commercially driven systems of mass production and undertakes a laborious process whereby designs are transferred by projection onto wood. The artist then collaborates with a team of people to handpaint the images. If the amplification had occurred by photographic or digital means, this new super-graphic would launch different interpretations. Through his chosen working system, Lin parodies the 'Made in Taiwan' emblem, which is internationally synonymous with consummate manufacturing techniques. Gestures of the hand are evident in Lin's painted cladding. A sensual quality, usually absent from public buildings, is invoked. Lin takes his disruption of hierarchies one twist further by often inviting his audience to step onto and into the work, or by touching, using and lying upon it. Thus the preciousness of the handmade artwork is undermined and it is rendered serviceable as well as picturesque. TACTILE SENSITIVITY Kenneth Frampton suggested in his essay 'Towards a critical regionalism' that architects can mitigate against the forces of a bland and ubiquitous internationalism. He warned of the fine line architects must negotiate between the use of sheer– surfaced technological materials and the tendency to regress into nostalgia or glib decoration. Rather than an overemphasis on the scenographic, Frampton pleaded for a heightening of the senses within the built environment - what he called 'tactile sensitivity' within 'place-form': One has in mind a whole range of complementary sensory perceptions which are registered by the labile body: the intensity of light, darkness, heat and cold; the feeling of humidity; the aroma of material; the almost palpable presence of masonry as the body senses its own confinement; the momentum of an induced gait and the relative inertia of the body as it traverses the floor; the echoing resonance of our own footfall.' Kiasma day bed 2001 Pentalite paint on wood, pillows 360 x 360 x 45cm Courtesy: Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki Photograph: Petri Virtanen/KKA Lin consciously abandons a generic, international visual language in favour of forms located in his home place by adopting vernacular fabrics ofTaiwan as his idiom. And by introducing 'down' spaces into formal architecture, he refocuses his audience's awareness on the sensual aspects of their own presence within the space. Domestic architecture, with its workaday messiness and rampant array of decorated surfaces, remains embedded in the hidden fabric of the city. Monumental architecture, meanwhile, often predominates as a site for internationalism. By locating his work in museums and public buildings, Lin restores the presence of the intimate and personal in these spaces and activates them with an energy and intent that is seductive and disruptive. Further, by employing magnification, he still manages to arrest and transport the viewer. Immensity is within ourselves. It is attached to a sort of expansion of being that life curbs and caution arrests, but which starts again when we are alone. As soon as we become motionless, we are elsewhere; we are dreaming in a world that is immense.• Lin uses mimicry and imperfect replication to achieve his sometimes discrete, sometimes startling interventions as he creates painted gardens in public spaces, inscribed for private use. Rhana Devenport is Senior Project Officer, Asia-Pacific Triennial, at the Queensland Art Gallery. 73