Li Chen: A New Eastern Spirit—Genuine and Otherworldly

About the exhibition

Expect rounded sculptures that look light even though they use heavy materials such as bronze. The exhibition text in the Korean culture ministry's listing says the swollen forms seem filled from within by gas or energy. Asia Art Center calls this ink-black sculpture.

Gana Art presents the show with Asia Art Center, selecting work from 1999 to 2025. The listing names pieces including Energy of Emptiness, Spiritual Journey through the Great Ether, Ordinary People and Ethereal Cloud, along with the recent Celestial Manuscripts.

The text explains the aim through an old East Asian ideal, giunsaengdong, in which a subject seems alive with vital energy. It says Li Chen holds neither to tradition nor to copied Western forms, and that "New Eastern Spirit" stands for drawing something contemporary out of the classics.

About the artist

Li Chen (b. 1963) was born in Yunlin, Taiwan, and lives and works in Taichung. Asia Art Center says the work blends Buddhist and Taoist ideas with contemporary thought and Western sculptural form. Li Chen showed Energy of Emptiness in 2007 in Venice, in a solo show the Korean listing calls an official parallel exhibition of the 52nd Biennale. Museum solo shows include the National Art Museum of China (2008), Singapore Art Museum (2009) and the Frye Art Museum in Seattle (2012). The listing names collections at Cernuschi Museum and the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts.

Sources: Gana Art: exhibition page