Despite of being born deaf and mute, Lin Liang-Tsai is an incredibly talented artist. Among his early mentors, including Yang San-Lang, Liao Chi-Chun and Li Mei-Shu, he has been particularly influenced by Liao Chi-Chun, who was known for his figure painting and nicknamed a Fauvist master of colours. Therefore, Lin's work mainly features figures as well.
Read MoreBefore the age of forty, Lin mostly created oil paintings. However, after he turned forty, he has started making three-dimensional sculptures, for which he chooses raw iron and bronze that show a vivid sense of liveliness and will oxidise over time. His solid training in sketching and drawing enables him to precisely delineate his figural subject matter. Having replaced painting canvases with bronze and iron plates and utilising hammers instead of paint brushes, every one of his sculptures is hammered, cut, soldered, twisted and electrically welded by the artist personally to create its unique form. Countless welding marks and soldering points produce the distinctive strokes and texture informing the sculptural surfaces, while his painterly yet refined lines form the twisting and turning sculptural planes, conveying the subtle expression of the real and the virtual as well as the power and the softness of his works. Lin specialises in expressing intangible feelings and spirituality with partial delineation of the human body, demonstrating the artist's candid and continual struggles with and exploration of life.
Lin was born in Changhua in 1947. He graduated from the Western Painting Division, Department of Fine Arts, National Taiwan Academy of Arts. In 1984, he entered the Department of Fine Arts, Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Brussels (Académie Royale des Beaux Arts de Bruxelles) in Belgium, and transferred to the Department of Sculpture the next year. When he graduated in 1989, he was awarded the Professional Artist Award and the Award of Royal Academy of Arts. In 1990, he was commissioned to create the European June 4th Democratic Monument, entitled The Torch of Freedom. He was also the sole recipient of the Wu San-Lien Arts Award in 2008. Lin has exhibited extensively in Belgium, France, Germany, Australia, Korea, etc. His works have been included in the collections of Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (Musee Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique), Taiwan Provincial Museum of Fine Arts (now National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts), Taipei Fine Arts Museum and Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts among others.
Text courtesy Double Square Gallery.
