Tina Keng Gallery Presents He Yu-Sen at ART TAIPEI 2026 Made In Taiwan—Young Artist Discovery | Booth M05
Southern Snow: A Landscape Taking Shape in Layers of White
Exhibition | 2026 Made In Taiwan—Young Artist Discovery
Booth | M05
VIP Preview | Thursday, October 29, 2026
Public Dates | Friday, October 30–Monday, November 2, 2026
Venue | Taipei World Trade Center, Exhibition Hall 1 (No. 5, Section 5, Xinyi Road, Xinyi District, Taipei, Taiwan)
Tina Keng Gallery presents He Yu-Sen at Booth M05 in the Made In Taiwan (MIT)—Young Artist Discovery section of ART TAIPEI 2026. Centering on his Southern Snow series and related works from recent years, the presentation traces how the artist develops a sculptural vocabulary through observations of his surroundings, transformations of materials, and lived experience.
Born in Tainan, He graduated from the Department of Sculpture at the National Taiwan University of Arts before pursuing a master’s degree at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Moving from the south to the north, his first encounter with snow brought a heightened awareness of how changes in climate and environment can alter perceptions of familiar surroundings. Beneath a covering of white, existing forms receded from view, and familiar scenes took on an unfamiliar appearance. Southern Snow emerged from this experience, bringing southern plants and northern snowscapes together within a single imagined setting. It also marked the beginning of his sustained exploration of covering, solidification, and changes in material states.
He often begins with found branches and plant remains, constructing metal armatures before repeatedly applying and building up layers of plaster, fiberglass-reinforced plastic, and other materials, allowing them to harden. As these materials flow and set, gravity, temperature, and time introduce changes that cannot be fully anticipated. The artist continually observes, refines, and makes decisions about form, allowing material properties and deliberate intervention to shape the work together. The original configurations of the plants gradually become sculptural forms poised between natural growth and human shaping.
The Southern Snow works on view take their cue from small white flowers commonly found in Tainan, enlarging them to a scale approaching that of the human body. Through their layered white surfaces, the works bring plants native to the warm south into an imagined northern snowscape, creating a scene rarely encountered. Linkage begins with the root systems of dead plants. Its structures of support and connection explore how individuals draw close and depend on one another while retaining a measure of distance. Although the works initially appear uniformly white, closer inspection reveals differences in thickness, sheen, and texture. As visitors move around them, shift their gaze, or bend down to look more closely, details concealed from other viewpoints gradually emerge, along with subtle connections between individual forms.
The booth’s spatial arrangement reflects He’s close attention to the experience of viewing. A large flower-shaped sculpture provides an initial visual focus, while other works are arranged at varying heights and scales to create a layered spatial composition in which forms echo one another. The presentation also incorporates his recent exploration of “twinning”: two forms are joined into a whole while retaining their respective contours and characteristics. Different states of the same thing are placed alongside one another, revealing distinctions in form and time. Some works also draw on memories of light and shadow in the streets of his hometown, translating impressions of everyday surroundings into sculptural forms. From his first encounter with northern snowscapes to his renewed attention to memories of life in the south, the works reveal how He continues to develop his imagination of form through his surroundings and lived experience.
Extending the thinking behind Southern Snow, Tina Keng Gallery and He Yu-Sen have jointly conceived Perceiving Otherwise, a special project that explores the perceptual experiences opened up by covering and material transformation. Vinyl records are completely coated with materials similar to those used in Southern Snow. Their recognizable contours remain, while the sound inscribed in their grooves is sealed beneath the material and concealed from access. As successive layers accumulate and set, new thicknesses and textures emerge, giving a familiar object a markedly different appearance.
Visitors are invited to look closely and touch the objects, feeling with their fingertips the subtle variations in relief and rich textures of the hardened white coating. The records retain their recognizable contours, while the sound they hold remains enclosed beneath the material. These changes also alter the ways in which people recognize and approach the objects. The project brings a central concern of Southern Snow and its related series into visitors’ direct experience: as existing things change through covering and solidification, the process of recognizing them anew opens up different ways of perceiving and understanding.
Following their collaboration on A Blast of Lyricism: Contemporary Taiwanese Art in London in 2025, Tina Keng Gallery and He Yu-Sen have jointly developed the presentation and public engagement program for this year’s MIT section. Through the selection of works, spatial arrangement, a commissioned essay, and conversations at the booth, the gallery offers a considered presentation of his current practice while continuing to expand dialogue around his work within curatorial research and collecting.
About the Artist
He Yu-Sen (b. 1995, Tainan) holds a BFA in Sculpture from the National Taiwan University of Arts and an MFA in Sculpture from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. His recent solo exhibitions include Skeletons and Rhizomes (2025) and Southern Snow (2024). He received the CHIMEI Arts Award in 2026 and the Judges’ Special Award at the Kaohsiung Award in 2025. His work entered the collection of the Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum in 2020.