Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Comments on the Finalist 

The artist proposes a unique perspective of viewing contemporary life through painting, which delineates a personal sense of place, characteristic of the internet generation and mapped through the use of cellphones and by one’s feet, conveying feelings through scenes in a highly idiosyncratic style. The dense brushstrokes and filled images further increase the tension of the paintings and give meanings to ordinary, insignificant sceneries, treating them as personal landmarks. Through painting, the artist highlights the fact that the universal and conceptual quality of maps is no longer emphasized in this era. Instead, maps are embedded with divergent meanings created by individuals. These images, connecting places and body relations, are mixed with fantasies and transfigurations, transforming long periods of private time with these locations into sensory memories that are more lasting than simply taking check-in pictures. (Commentator: CHANG Ching-Wen)

Artwork Introduction

This exhibition features the artist’s eponymous oil painting series created in 2022. The Best Place Map series, along with the creative context surrounding the idea of “best places,” draws inspiration from Japanese anime. The artist juxtaposes textual notes, mental impressions, and online data of images and texts, utilizing their disparities as the foundation for creation. This approach thus incorporates many artists’ unique perspectives within the Best Place Map series while reflecting the internet era in which young Taiwanese artists grew up and which has informed their distinctive sensibilities and aesthetic ideas manifested in the re-interpretation and innovation of traditional media.

About the Artist

XIAO Qi-Heng (b. 1991, Changhua) holds an MFA in Art and Design from National Tsing Hua University and currently lives in Kaohsiung. Xiao is the recipient of the 3rd Hong Mei New Talent Award (2016), the Excellent Work Award of the Kaohsiung Awards (2018), and the Selected Award of the Taipei Art Awards (2019). He has exhibited at the Sato Museum in Japan, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, and various alternative spaces. Xiao mainly works with painting. His work draws inspiration from everyday experiences. His depictions of external scenes or spaces are largely incorporated with subjective impressions or feelings, transforming his works into a certain juncture of reality and imagination.

Production Team

Exhibiting Artist: Xiao Qi Heng

Exhibition Gallery: NUNU Fine Art