EXHIBITED:

Madden Reality: Post-Taipei Art Group, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, January 21- April 5, 2009

ILLUSTRATED:

Madden Reality: Post-Taipei Art Group, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, 2009, color illustrated, p. 108

When construing Lien Chien-hsing's works, we find the vivid, deluxe scenes, similar to 3D computer games, do not touch the core value of our hearts. What associates people to feeling first and most easily is his visual ironic to the "offense to nature" by human being and his critics towards material civilization. The real purpose of the series in the style "magic realistic painting" created by Lien Chien-hsing since the 1990s is to surpass the fences of technique, combine abrupt or abstruse images in routine sceneries with definite description, or add implied symbols and role play in highly realistic scenes, creating a psychological fortune different from real world but extremely rational. This way, more metaphoric humanistic meanings are extended to his works.

"The basic pictorial element of 'Affection in the Forsaken City' is 'ruins', which suggests an architectural space that was built for specific functions during a certain phase of human activity and that has gradually lost its functions over time. Forgotten or eulogized, turned into a fairytale or monument, and after being weathered for a period of time, it gives a sense of bleakness or sublimeness that has the effect of inspiring awe, evoking nostalgia, warning about the swift passage of time or mourning the disappearance of an industry." (Madden Reality: Post-Taipei Art Group, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, 2009, p.106)