Asia Art Center (Taipei) is pleased to announce the annual international emerging artists exhibition running from June 11, 2022, Narrative Minds, which features 15 artists from the UK, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, the US, Canada, and Colombia. The concept that is brought into focus, “narrative”, foregrounds the contextual dimension instead of the story itself. It is much emphasized how stories are narrated and how people produce authentic subjective experience through establishing their identities and interacting with their surroundings. In Narrative Minds, artists from different countries of varied backgrounds investigate their visual narratives by looking into three major aspects.

First of all, discussions centering around “humanity” look into human beings in societal contexts and interpersonal relations. Narratives belonging to this category are inevitably emotionally charged. Alejandro Acosta, who is passionate about literature and online games, draws upon a combination of classical art history and the contemporary world. His art explores the virtual world and reality while addressing technology-oriented lives of urban contemporaneity in which acceleration and maximization are valued. Similarly, Francisco Rodriguez depicts a mixture of fantasies and everyday reality. The storyboard-like compositions he creates are rich in references to visual languages of cinema and comics, which invites viewers to explore potential narratives links between images. In Carlo D’Anselmi’s paintings, humans behave in accordance to conscious and subconscious reality, as if they were in a dream or in a transitional state. Poetic qualities can be found in such a meditative atmosphere brought about by metaphoric descriptions. Veronica Fernandez, on the other hand, illustrates blurred personal recollections of family life. Through an intended sense of unfinishedness, the narratives are made open-ended for viewers to create their own. A shared nostalgia speaks to the relations between human beings and their surroundings, as well as the impermanence of emotions. With hints of a migratory background and nostalgic sentiments, Giorgio Celin’s work portrays the tension and contradictions that happen when people gradually become mutually dependent yet meanwhile causing harm to each other in an intimate relationship. David Noro utilizes different characters to constitute comprehensive scenes in which images are based on snippets of real events. The scenes in Noro’s works are chaotic yet serene, where the out-of-focus pictures bring about new, extended meanings.

Secondly, this exhibition includes artworks concerning a subject’s endless imagining of the “environment” and the condensation of everyday poeticity. Images of modernist leisure created by Charlotte Keates, for example, are inspired by interiors, travels, her interest in architecture, and elements from the natural world. Keates’ images convey a sense of stillness and vulnerability—almost like a moment frozen in time waiting for something to emerge. Meanwhile, the artistic practice of Andrew Pierre Hart explores the symbiotic relationship between sound and painting, with a focus on somatic responses to ideas relating to sounds. In addition to the focus on sounds, Hart’s work negotiates the visual language and legacies of Western abstraction. Florence Hutchings’ nearly abstract paintings, on the other hand, revolve around the poetry of the everyday. She depicts elements of her life, giving them the life and vitality through constant, labor-intensive, layered repainting and collage. And, Amy Lincoln makes imaginative and intensely hued paintings of the natural world. The intricately considered juxtaposition of lighter and darker hues playfully constructs depth and spaciousness on a flat surface. Moreover, Etienne Zack sees painting as a memory storage technology and a philosophical terrain. Having been reflecting on the fast collapse and shifts of natural habitats on earth, he pieces fractured images together to discuss how newly altered modes of mediated existence in our lives affect how we feel, think and belong to our surroundings.

Last but not least, the third group of artworks deals with symbolism and healing narratives. With a subjective agency active telling and interpreting diverse chaotic fragments of inspiration, the artist or the storytelling gets to know himself/herself better through the narratives he/she tells. The art of Joseph Olisaemeka Wilson, for instance, is inspired by popular culture, modern art, and African folklores, with which he aims at examining colonialism, archeology, and futurism. Narratives are dissected and dissembled in order to give way to a new universe created with machines, humans, animals, skeletons, spirits and ritualistic dance—a fantasized Armageddon. Likewise, Astrid Terrazas merges dreamscapes, Mexican ancestral folklore, and personal life experiences in her paintings, which she describes as “a process of finding and burying (things).” The transfigurations and metaphors in her paintings function like spells for protection. Whereas Terrazas sees painting as a journey of weaving new healing narratives to transmute histories, Pieter Jennes paints scenes that are often reminiscent of folklores or comic theater performances. While being serious and playful at the same time, Jennes’ work looks at old and contemporary cultural phenomena to put forth a new compound narrative. Lastly, Moritz Schleime’s artistic practice is a colorful rush of symbolism where music, literature, art history, popular culture all serve as a source of inspiration. Schleime’s surreal scenes, filled with dualities pertaining to rebirth after destruction—such as life and death, movement and stillness, and intoxication and sobriety, not only are humorous and full of irony but also shows a powerful presence of romance and hope.

Subjective experiences are preserved within individuals and in cultures at large. They manifest themselves in intangible connotative forms. More specifically, experience is a kind of sensory or cognitive structure created during attempts of meaning-making. Artists’ visual languages, then, are like flocculants that bring together scattered, transient, unstructured perceptions and transform them into rich narratives told from diverse points of view.