Pan Hsinhua: Garden of Mind

Qualia Contemporary Art is pleased to present Garden of Mind (借景造園), a solo exhibition of paintings by Taiwanese artist PAN Hsinhua. The artist’s first exhibition at the gallery will feature a series of surreal landscape paintings that fuse traditional aspects of Chinese culture and philosophy with contemporary Taiwanese society and the environment. PAN collapses paradoxical and opposing elements on the picture plane, setting the scene for open-ended narratives unfettered by reality. Viewers will generate their own stories from the labyrinthine worlds depicted within the works, each one limitless in its potential for interpretation. From PAN’s technical execution and experimentation to his recurring visual motifs, the dialogue abounds between old and new, past and present. While PAN consciously draws from both ancient and recent history, his position is decidedly current, situated in a context that is shaped by heritage and tradition. Complex scenes composed of cultural relics – bonsai, literati stones, incense burners, and political statuettes – religious and folk patterns, and facets of both the natural and built environments – concrete, architecture, and Taiwanese flora and fauna – all coalesce around the central figure of a small, enigmatic boy, often in surprisingly formal arrangements that belie his youth. The artist renders these imagined landscapes with a precision that masterfully blurs the entanglements between real and surreal elements. PAN’s playful configurations employ paradox to highlight the anachronism of the present moment and the complexities of contemporary culture from a Taiwanese perspective. The exhibition presents viewers with invented settings for impossible encounters between unlikely counterparts, often subverting social hierarchies and political ideologies in the process. Garden of Mind invites the public to question these foundational pillars while completing each scene with their ideas and experiences.