PRINTCatalogue Note:
The highest realm in the pursuit of aesthetic theory in ancient China: What is expensive withers, which is to say the surface layer drys up and the inside turns soft, so it appears as tranquil as true beauty. Such an idea is echoed in Wu Guanzhong's evaluation of Chu Teh-Chun's style:
“In Chinese tradition, the great attention paid to the grains and textures of the papers and silks as well as the brush strokes lends to an Eastern painting, which has the characteristic of revealing more the closer one looks. With his striking and bold oil paintings, Chu Teh-Chun made every effort to broaden the appeal of Chinese ink, with strokes that could speak to a contemporary audience around the world.”
“From a distance, Chu Teh-Chun's work can appear as Western painting, or as Chinese painting if seen up close. For me, his creative approach lends itself well to clarifying one's perspective. Another prominent feature of his work is its translucence, with the viscosity of the oil paint being woven through a more translucent mode. The semitransparent effect originally comes from a type of Chinese paper with a distinctive elegance and style that would be unobtainable in the West. For Chu Teh-Chun's abstraction, objects in the foreground and background of a painting do not pose a constraint but instead motivate the artist's pursuit of a deep spatiality that can coalesce with the concrete rhythms in his ink and brushwork. And this accounts for the ampleness of the depth and form in his work.”
“Chu Te-Chun has opened up a space for painting with his extraordinary talent.” - Hubert Jiun, art critic and authority on French literature
The world of Chu Teh-Chun's paintings abounds in poetic sensibilities, and the rhythms of music fill the air. The colours are complemented in ways both calm and unrestrained while the lines flow like wild prairie grass, likening the work to Chinese painting and calligraphy. The fine detail common to Eastern art and the bold, daring colours common to Western painting can both be found in this work, which also highlights how naturally zealous, warm, and unbarred the artist is in his lyrical approach to abstract expressionism. An important element in Chu Teh-Chun's work is the use of lighting, which often has a mysterious way of hovering in the painting, as if speaking to the deeply kept secrets of mother nature and the cosmos. In the same way as traditional Chinese landscape painting, he places people in a new world, structured by his colours and brushstrokes. Walking inside is like entering a world of pure artistry. If one follows on a whim of the flowing lines of his brushwork, there lies a fresh and pungent world waiting to be discovered. If diving in headfirst and immersing oneself in the poetry of this world, it is possible to lose oneself to the feeling of total inhibition, freedom, comfort, and happiness that exudes from Chu Teh-Chun's work. Even though it is oil on canvas, the painting still gives a sincere portrayal of the Chinese landscape concept. For a Chinese person, the work would indicate both a reverence for that tradition and a thorough knowledge of it.
“The space of Chu Teh-Chun does not conform to that of the classical perspective. We could say it is a space of multiple dimensions… Owing to the enlivened choice of colours and the overall compositions, slight permutations are seen as light washes over them. As much as they are spatial, these paintings are as structural, as well.”- Maurice Panier
As Chu Teh-Chun made full use of the lines, dots, and thick strokes of Chinese calligraphy and painting in the 1980s, the angles, modulation, and aspect of Chinese calligraphy are all evident in his work of this period. It was not until the end of the decade that he shifted towards an interpretation of natural light with a greater depth and tried to incorporate more colour into his work. In expanding the emotional breath of his technique, he began to touch on the questions the Chinese cultural spirit, and in adding colour to his work, he enriched the emotional aspect of his practice.
Because it stands as symbol for the natural colour found on earth, Chu Teh-Chun was fond of blue tones, which could be both cordial and poetic while saturating the world in majestic hues. “Effluves de Printemps” (‘Emanations of Spring’) is a work based on this blue, exuding a certain mood through its mysterious and romantic colours. Upon closer inspection, the light tone of the colour reveals flowers blooming in and out of focus as rays of light pierce through. While the figures in the painting may be indistinct in a work marked by such enigma as this one, if you lend it your ears and listen closely, there just might be a Chinese melody that trickles through with the same subtly as the image itself.
If a full, piece by piece review of Chu Teh-Chun's work were conducted, one would be amazed by the artistic wealth which runs throughout and which never even comes close to an 'uninspired' moment. Excellent evidence of this can be found in his post-1980s work. An artist with years of experience might come to be judged by those years, not to mention the memories and even the moods that are derived from them. They all contribute to a practice that draws nearer to what resides within the individual, which is reflected in a greater unity between the work and its creator. Through a sort of fermentation, thoughts and desires are transformed into memories. Chu Teh-Chun's success is no accident. Even in his early work it can be seen how he came to create a new space within contemporary painting. In integrating his own background in Chinese calligraphy, and by letting that be infected by Western abstraction's lack of inhibition, he was able to continually reshape the modern poetry of landscape painting. And such a feat is more than worthy of appreciation.
“In Chinese tradition, the great attention paid to the grains and textures of the papers and silks as well as the brush strokes lends to an Eastern painting, which has the characteristic of revealing more the closer one looks. With his striking and bold oil paintings, Chu Teh-Chun made every effort to broaden the appeal of Chinese ink, with strokes that could speak to a contemporary audience around the world.”
“From a distance, Chu Teh-Chun's work can appear as Western painting, or as Chinese painting if seen up close. For me, his creative approach lends itself well to clarifying one's perspective. Another prominent feature of his work is its translucence, with the viscosity of the oil paint being woven through a more translucent mode. The semitransparent effect originally comes from a type of Chinese paper with a distinctive elegance and style that would be unobtainable in the West. For Chu Teh-Chun's abstraction, objects in the foreground and background of a painting do not pose a constraint but instead motivate the artist's pursuit of a deep spatiality that can coalesce with the concrete rhythms in his ink and brushwork. And this accounts for the ampleness of the depth and form in his work.”
“Chu Te-Chun has opened up a space for painting with his extraordinary talent.” - Hubert Jiun, art critic and authority on French literature
The world of Chu Teh-Chun's paintings abounds in poetic sensibilities, and the rhythms of music fill the air. The colours are complemented in ways both calm and unrestrained while the lines flow like wild prairie grass, likening the work to Chinese painting and calligraphy. The fine detail common to Eastern art and the bold, daring colours common to Western painting can both be found in this work, which also highlights how naturally zealous, warm, and unbarred the artist is in his lyrical approach to abstract expressionism. An important element in Chu Teh-Chun's work is the use of lighting, which often has a mysterious way of hovering in the painting, as if speaking to the deeply kept secrets of mother nature and the cosmos. In the same way as traditional Chinese landscape painting, he places people in a new world, structured by his colours and brushstrokes. Walking inside is like entering a world of pure artistry. If one follows on a whim of the flowing lines of his brushwork, there lies a fresh and pungent world waiting to be discovered. If diving in headfirst and immersing oneself in the poetry of this world, it is possible to lose oneself to the feeling of total inhibition, freedom, comfort, and happiness that exudes from Chu Teh-Chun's work. Even though it is oil on canvas, the painting still gives a sincere portrayal of the Chinese landscape concept. For a Chinese person, the work would indicate both a reverence for that tradition and a thorough knowledge of it.
“The space of Chu Teh-Chun does not conform to that of the classical perspective. We could say it is a space of multiple dimensions… Owing to the enlivened choice of colours and the overall compositions, slight permutations are seen as light washes over them. As much as they are spatial, these paintings are as structural, as well.”- Maurice Panier
As Chu Teh-Chun made full use of the lines, dots, and thick strokes of Chinese calligraphy and painting in the 1980s, the angles, modulation, and aspect of Chinese calligraphy are all evident in his work of this period. It was not until the end of the decade that he shifted towards an interpretation of natural light with a greater depth and tried to incorporate more colour into his work. In expanding the emotional breath of his technique, he began to touch on the questions the Chinese cultural spirit, and in adding colour to his work, he enriched the emotional aspect of his practice.
Because it stands as symbol for the natural colour found on earth, Chu Teh-Chun was fond of blue tones, which could be both cordial and poetic while saturating the world in majestic hues. “Effluves de Printemps” (‘Emanations of Spring’) is a work based on this blue, exuding a certain mood through its mysterious and romantic colours. Upon closer inspection, the light tone of the colour reveals flowers blooming in and out of focus as rays of light pierce through. While the figures in the painting may be indistinct in a work marked by such enigma as this one, if you lend it your ears and listen closely, there just might be a Chinese melody that trickles through with the same subtly as the image itself.
If a full, piece by piece review of Chu Teh-Chun's work were conducted, one would be amazed by the artistic wealth which runs throughout and which never even comes close to an 'uninspired' moment. Excellent evidence of this can be found in his post-1980s work. An artist with years of experience might come to be judged by those years, not to mention the memories and even the moods that are derived from them. They all contribute to a practice that draws nearer to what resides within the individual, which is reflected in a greater unity between the work and its creator. Through a sort of fermentation, thoughts and desires are transformed into memories. Chu Teh-Chun's success is no accident. Even in his early work it can be seen how he came to create a new space within contemporary painting. In integrating his own background in Chinese calligraphy, and by letting that be infected by Western abstraction's lack of inhibition, he was able to continually reshape the modern poetry of landscape painting. And such a feat is more than worthy of appreciation.