The Tina Keng Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by the Taiwanese artist Deng Wen-Jen, Le Festin – La Vanité (on view June 25 to July 31, 2011).at the Tina Keng Gallery (Tunnan). The opening reception will be held on Saturday, June 25, from 4:30to 7:00pm.
Le Festin – La Vanité brings together the series Feast– Three-Inch Lotus Shoe (2000-2),Feast– Betel Nut (2003-4), Feast– Culture(1998-present), and LaneEntrance(2010-present). In all of these works, Deng explores a variety of pleasures, ranging from the culinary to the erotic. She creates collages by joining embroidery, fabric, and paper, with paint, as she blurs the boundaries between the constructed and the painted image.
Food, erotic desire, and memory are at the core of many of Deng’s works. In Feast– Three-Inch Lotus Shoe,she bases her composition on her own homemade dish of eggplants and pigs’ feet to explore the theme of the Chinese embroidered shoe. Deng continues with this theme of the culinary and the sensual in her paintings of the series Feast– Betel Nut, all of which are meant to highlight sensory perception, through their interpretation of “image,” “symbol,” and “metaphor.” The sexy wife of a butcher, an elderly vegetable seller, a betel nut beauty and street vendors, populate the works of the most recent series, Feast– Culture. Food is again at the source of the works, but this time Deng draws a distinction between raw and cooked food. Deng notes that she “delved deeper into the culture of food and stretched the metaphor further to depict the relationship between men and women, and also ofour society.” Desire and love emerge as subjects in works from the series Lane Entrance, in which Deng depicts scenes from Taiwan and Europe, as she draws on Taiwanese culture and memories of her childhood.
Deng Wen-Jen
Deng now works and lives in Taichung, andwas born in Hualien, in 1970. She received a D.N.S.P (National Diploma Superior of Plastic Arts)from National Superior Fine Arts School (L’ENSB—A)(1999)in Paris, France. She has been a member of Hantoo Art group since 2003, participating in various group exhibitions with the group domestic and abroad. She is alsothe 2005 recipient of the Council of Cultural Affairs Artist Residency sponsorship, for her residency in CAMAC Artist Village in Paris, France, and published the book Nourriture．Image．Culture in 2008.