TKG+ is pleased to announce Charwei Tsai’s first solo exhibition in Taiwan, Elemental Light, which will be on view at our Neihu venue from August 13 to September 11, 2011 (opening reception on August 13 from 4:30 to 7:00pm). From Tsai’s earliest works embracing her personal connection to Buddhism, to her recent pieces, which draw inspiration from other religions, the photographs, videos, and multi-media installations of Elemental Light contemplate the religious concept of primordial light, a source of basic human goodness.

The exhibition opens with one of Tsai’s earliest pieces, Frog Mantra (2005), a photograph on which she delicately wrote the Heart Sutra – a seminal Buddhist text and recurring motif through which she has explored transience. Similar themes, under new inspirations, appear in the photographs of the series Gone (2011), on view for the first time. Here, in Sanskrit, the Heart Sutra can be found within the diffusion of light of the photographs, taken with a camera with a broken lens.

In her new works Tsai continues to place keen attention on spiritual texts, their application to organic and inorganic materials, and the meaning behind and produced by the process of inscribing such materials herself. Text and metaphors of transcendence are also at play in the video and sound installation Ah (2011), where visitors approaching the image of the dissolving ink letters are surrounded by voices repeating “ah,” a sacred sound in many religions. This piece transforms sound into a visual and audio vibration that highlights the environment and spirituality.

Charwei Tsai was born in Taiwan (1980) and presently lives and works in Taipei and Paris. In addition to her art practice, Tsai publishes, designs and edits Lovely Daze, a curatorial journal published twice a year. Tsai graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Industrial Design and Art & Architectural History (2002) and completed the postgraduate research program at L’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (2010). She has had solo exhibitions in Paris, Sydney, Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Bogotá, and her projects have been included in various international exhibitions, including the inaugural Singapore Biennale (2006), Thermocline of Art: New Asian Waves at the ZKM Center of Art and Media, Karlsruhe (2007), Traces du Sacré at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2008), the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial (2009), and Taiwan Calling at the Ludwig Museum, Budapest (2010). Tsai will also be participating in the upcoming Yokohama Triennale and the Rhurtriennale (both in 2011).