If painting can be called a kind of visual music, then Chen Hsientung's paintings of poetic images have created a revolutionary new chapter in art history—the painting as symphonic poem. Following the successful showings of his 80-year retrospective at The National Art Museum of China and the Shanghai Art Museum in 2008, a stunning new movement of Chen's visual symphony will be unfolding—"The Symphonic Poem Chapter: Chen Hsientung's 2010 Taipei/Shanghai Simultaneous Solo Exhibition," to be held respectively at the Shanghai and Taipei branches of the 99 Degrees Art Center.

Despite his advanced age, Chen Hsientung maintains his love and commitment to art and his unflagging energy in painting. Chen's 2009 work "Poem and Image" received an automatic invitation for showing in the National Art Exhibition of the Republic of China, and in 2010 was purchased by The National Art Museum of China for its permanent collection. In his 2010 works, Chen continues as usual to extol the beauty of nature in fine, elegantly textured paintings with perfectly proportioned blocks of color. Like a symphonic conductor wielding a baton, at Chen's impulse elements of a narrative vocabulary are added to the work that allow the viewer, both visually and emotionally, to maintain their orientation as they travel with Chen through the lines, shapes, and colors woven into the painting. The presentation of these images clearly differs from the rational style of abstraction practiced by Western artists, and instead creates a kind of symphonic poem embodying elements of Chinese philosophy. The paintings, with their wealth of associations, rich layering, and liveliness, also display great refinement and incisive brushwork, a combination viewers are sure to find pleasing and intoxicating.

Fonda Hsu
99° Art Center