Liú Yung-jen

Born in 1958 in Chihshang Township, Taitung County, which is located between the plains and high mountains in the Eastern Rift Valley, Liú Yung-jen has breathed the world’s freshest source of air. In 1979, he was accepted into the Chinese Culture University Department of Fine Arts where he specialized in ink painting and built his foundation in oriental artistic thinking. Even as a student, he held numerous ink painting exhibitions and searched diligently for the roots of oriental culture. After graduating in 1983, he continued to specialize in ink monochrome media, and attempted to extend beyond the traditional into the modern. During that period, he also worked at the Council for Cultural Affairs and expanded his periodic and international perspectives in art. In 1990, he was determined to study art in Italy, and his creations gradually shifted from the figurative to the abstract. Particularly after he entered the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera in Milan in 1991, he began to explore artistic concepts. His creative media also changed from ink to oil, but the core of his artistic thinking remained oriental. In 1995, he received his master's degree from the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera.  After returning to Taiwan in 1996, he wholeheartedly developed his solo exhibition entitled "Complex Cube of Deep Breathing" organized by the Dimension Endowment of Art, an advocate of contemporary art, where he began promoting the concept of breathing as the core idea in ​​his artistic creations.

Over the last two decades, Liú Yung-jen has used breathing as his theme, and continued painting and holding exhibitions. The compositions and colors of his paintings have become increasingly refined, and his artistic interpretation of  breathing has become increasingly mature.   He now has his own unique personal style, and has created a new path for post-war Taiwanese fine arts. In particular, he has created aesthetic vision for moving abstract paintings from materiality to spirituality.

--By Jen-I Liao