ESLITE GALLERY is pleased to present Jennifer Wen Ma’s first solo exhibition in Taiwan--“INKED”. Mo, Chinese ink, has been the main medium for expression and communication for centuries in East Asia. It embodies all colors, emulates all forms, gives meaning to brush strokes, and aesthetic achievements. Concurrently, black is the culmination of all colors and absent of all light. It is also a powerful symbol of void and muteness. Its duality allows great room for exploration. And in this exhibition, black ink dominates the artistic vocabulary. The artist investigates Chinese painting, mo and the color black from different contemporary perspectives.

Approximately 10 works will be included in this exhibition, some installations and some videos. Installations include blackened plants by Chinese ink mo. Upon first glance, they resemble classic bird and flower paintings, but are three-dimensional and growing. For instance, blooming chrysanthemums, bamboos, orchid, plum tree and cypress, blackened by mo, are alive for the duration of the exhibition. The live plants dressed in black ink are also a testimony to the perseverance and power of renewal. Video works would include Brain Storm that shows a man and horse traveling through an ink-wash landscape. Sometimes quiet and atmospheric, sometimes turbulent and moody, the landscape changes while the man and horse walk on unwaveringly. The travelers are a pair of silent companions that weather through a landscape that is an abstract reflection of the storms of the mind. The live-action ink-painting process creates unpredictable visual results against the never changing movements of the travelers, rendering a new artistic language of time-based landscape painting. A black sandscape, entitled Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien occupies another gallery. Black sand painting sketches out a somewhat abstracted map of a personal landscape--the artist's life journey. The landmarks within this map are her failure milestones along the way. Real objects from her life related to each "failure" denotes the event. The song Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien, sung by the artist, plays in the background.

Born in 1973 in Beijing, Jennifer Wen Ma works with media as varied as installations, video, drawing, fashion design and performances. She has participated in numerous exhibitions internationally, including in Sydney Biennale (2010), Echigo-Tsumari Triennial (2009) and Guggenheim Bilbao (2009) and New York (2008). She was a member of the core creative team for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, and has won an Emmy as an associate producer for the NBC broadcast of the Beijing Olympic opening ceremony. To view her website, please go to: www.littlemeat.net.