TAIPEI.- Perrotin returns to Art Taipei 2025, presenting a curated selection of works by leading 20th-century masters, established artists, alongside fresh perspectives from mid-career and new-generation artists within the gallery’s international program.
Postwar Masters
Highlights of the twentieth century bring together Hans Hartung and Anna-Eva Bergman—key figures in European abstraction—and Lynn Chadwick, whose bronzes revitalized postwar figuration.
As a significant figure of Art Informel and Lyrical Abstraction, Hartung turned toward greater spontaneity in the 1960s, painting directly on canvas rather than transposing intuitive studies from paper. Years of printmaking practice became more evident in his works of the 1960s and 1970s, where engraving and lithography served as mediums for mark-making experimentation. T1961-H23 (1961) showcases Hartung’s 1960s “scratching” technique, where comb- or rake-like tools were dragged across half-wet paint, incising lines that reveal underlayers or raw canvas, whereas T1971-R12 (1971) reflects his 1970s use of lithographic rollers to apply acrylic on varied supports.
From the 1950s onward, Anna-Eva Bergman developed her signature use of gilded gold and silver leaf on colored grounds, capturing the essence of Nordic landscapes—fjords, glaciers, mountains, and waterfalls. In Petite falaise (1965), a silvery blue palette, metal leaf, and tempera render the sheer, awe-inspiring cliffs of her native Norway. The solemn, enigmatic scene reflects her enduring rever- ence for nature and the cosmos, evoking a sense of the sublime akin to Romantic landscape paintings.
Complementing these is a survey of bronzes by Lynn Chadwick, which presents his more figurative explorations from the 1970s to the 1990s, when he embraced bronze as a medium in its own right (e.g., Maquette IX Sitting Elektra, 1969). Centered on the theme of “companionship,” this sculptural ensemble presents single or paired figures—rectan- gular-headed men and triangular-headed women, their golden faces contrasting with rough dark bodies. Ranging from angular abstractions to wind-lifted, naturalistic cloaks (Maquette I Jubilee III, 1984), the series also includes the Stairs series (First Stairs, 1991), in which female figures meet in opposing movement, marking the final variation in his two-decade exploration of figural form.
Established Visionaries
Lee Bae presents two works from his Brushstroke series and one from Issu du feu. In the two Brushstroke paintings, broad, unbroken gestures in diluted charcoal ink test the calligraphic unity of body, mind, and material, while the absorbent paper opens a wide tonal range of black. Issu du feu turns to charcoal itself: shards affixed, grated, and polished into mosaic planes that figure fire’s dual life as fuel and purifier and its cycle of destruction and renewal. Rooted in Korean beliefs in charcoal’s protective, cleansing force, these works extend Lee’s decades-long dialogue with the medium—treating it not as mere material but as a partner in presence and resilience.
Jean-Michel Othoniel’s two works from the Amant Suspendu series string reflective, baroque beads of Murano glass, amethyst, and amber-mica. Their color stems from pigments, mineral powders, and metal fused into molten glass. Each six-bead chain ends with a small orb nested in a transparent bead, its aperture shaping negative space and concentric rings that refract light. Evoking oversized necklaces—part rosary, part love pendant—they invite quiet contemplation and pursue the artist’s aim to re-enchant the world through beauty.
In Future Herbarium, Laurent Grasso painted imaginary double-headed sunflowers from the future, in the form of 19th-century botanical illustrations. He drew inspiration from plant mutations following natural disasters, such as the Fukushima nuclear accident. Related to Grasso’s film ARTIFICIALIS, the Future Herbarium series continues his interest in anachronicity, interdependence with non-human entities, and the flattening of the nature/culture dyad.
Bridging two signatures of Superflat, Mr. and Takashi Murakami unveil two jointly produced paintings. The protagonists based on Mr.’s recent NFTs are set amid Murakami’s jubilant flower fields—together, the works extend the artists’ long-running effort to collapse boundaries between “high” and popular visual cultures, and to read kawaii’s brightness against its shadow.
Contemporary Voices
AYA TAKANO’s new work extends her vision of an animistic, Eden-like future—a utopia inhabited by big-eyed, elongated, fairy-like girls who live in harmony with non-human life. TAKANO paints in a graphic style with a muted palette, drawing on ukiyo-e, science fiction, ancient folklore, and diverse spiritual traditions, and reflecting on recent disasters such as the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.
Emi Kuraya’s new painting deepens her urban vignettes of young women on the cusp of adulthood. Drawing on shōjo manga but rendered in oil, her soft, gray-veiled palettes fold light-hearted sensuality into the monotony of daily life, tracing uncertainty, self-discovery, and quiet transformation.
Working with found objects and hand-blown glass, London-based Taiwanese artist Steph Huang’s conceptual sculptures and installations examine our ties to food—desire and guilt, luxury and ritual, comfort and play—linking everyday habits to broader histories. Drawing on fieldwork and archival research, she elevates overlooked objects and invites close, reflective looking. Her debut exhibition with the gallery, When an Encounter Takes Place, is currently on view at Perrotin Tokyo through October 25.
Other highlighted artists include Jason Boyd Kinsella, Joaquín Boz, Yayoi Deki, Mathilde Denize, Nick Goss, Thilo Heinzmann, Susumu Kamijo, Georges Mathieu, Otani Workshop, GaHee Park, Qi Zhuo, and Marty Schnapf.
