HOTPINK

An award-win­ning archi­tec­tur­al design­er based in Taiwan; Ling-Li Tseng star­ted cre­at­ing the wall-moun­ted sculp­ture series Sea­sons of Lupus in 2016. Left alone at her Lon­don home with mild skin rashes caused by a work-related res­in allergy, Tseng began exper­i­ment­ing with bright pink expand­able foam— an indus­tri­al mater­i­al com­monly used as wall insu­la­tion, res­ult­ing in a series of seem­ingly orna­ment­al and haunt­ingly beau­ti­ful work. Com­posed of col­or­ful self-expand­ing foam and lay­ers of hand-dyed Span­dex nest reg­u­lat­ing the foam’s move­ment, the body of work offers subtle grad­a­tions of col­ors and reflectiv­ity. Neatly arranged in oval and rect­an­gu­lar shapes, the pieces also remind the view­er of tri­bal ritu­al masks or mini­ature land­scapes, sequen­tially leav­ing us in an awed fas­cin­a­tion with the world of won­der, myth, and irreg­u­lar ener­gies.

Tseng’s cre­ations, whose mater­i­al is drawn from a mul­ti­tude of archi­tec­tur­al tra­di­tions, have an expli­cit rela­tion­ship to the body, explor­ing how the per­cep­tu­al indi­vidu­al exper­i­ences are shaped by soci­et­al, eco­nom­ic, and geo­graph­ic­al struc­tures that are par­tic­u­lar to a cer­tain time. These eccent­ric vari­ations, achieved by know­ledge the artist obtained from her work, sup­ply seem­ingly free-grow­ing forms with com­plex inquir­ies into the nature of con­trol and chance. How­ever, Tseng’s vir­tu­osic approach is more than an exten­sion of her pro­fes­sion­al achieve­ment. It is a com­plete sub­mis­sion into her intern­al exper­i­ence and an ordered expres­sion of objects and space.

With an inten­tion­ally naïve qual­ity, Tempta­tion (2018 — ) and Addic­tion (2022 — ) series by Taiwanese-Amer­ic­an artist Judy Gee stand one meter tall and one meter wide each — auda­ciously scaled for her volup­tu­ous sub­ject mat­ter in sweet every­day­ness. Inspired by her time liv­ing in Shang­hai from 2008 to 2016, Judy began depict­ing simple every­day indul­gences but quickly dived into blunt seduc­tion — power, wealth, and viol­ence. With metic­u­lous brush­work and vivid col­or palette, the artist presents hyper-real­ist­ic sweet treats with the mag­ni­fi­cent glaze, which pres­ence acts as an unset­tling foil to the dark­er sprinkles— some­times your nor­mal con­fetti, some­times golden bul­lets.

Con­fron­ted by the giant donuts per­haps looked at first lumin­ous, dreamy, and plain as day, the view­er, on a closer invest­ig­a­tion, awakens to the sheer dens­ity brought out by the pic­tures, of the myop­ic obses­sions and the long-run­ning addic­tions, with which the world is brim­ming — one for each of us. Gee — while mak­ing sense of her own desires and bicul­tur­al iden­tity — con­ducts a sharp

inter­rog­a­tion on addict­ive beha­vi­ors and invest­ig­ates the mas­tery of will­power. “It’s right in your face. Unapo­lo­get­ic­ally”, said the artist.

HOTPINK’s month-long pro­gram will fea­ture private and pub­lic art tours, and one print and object sign­ing event led by the artists. The exhib­i­tion is organ­ized in col­lab­or­a­tion with WANG­SIM.

About the Artists

Ling-Li Tseng pos­sesses expert­ise in immers­ive spa­tial exper­i­ences, install­a­tion art, and mater­i­al exper­i­ments, with a style and scale that are unlim­ited. She holds mas­ter­’s degrees in archi­tec­ture and design from The Cooper Uni­on and Har­vard Uni­ver­sity in the United States. Cur­rently, she serves as an Assist­ant Pro­fess­or at the Insti­tute of Archi­tec­ture at Nation­al Yang Ming Chiao Tung Uni­ver­sity. In 2016, she co-foun­ded Serendip­ity Stu­dio to facil­it­ate col­lab­or­a­tion among vari­ous cre­at­ors, and her work has won numer­ous inter­na­tion­al awards, includ­ing the Red Dot: Best of the Best Award, Good Design Award, Golden Pin Award, TID Award, Shen­zhen Glob­al Design Award, and [d]arc award.

Tseng’s mul­ti­fa­ceted iden­tity allows her cre­ations to tra­verse the domains of sci­ence, engin­eer­ing, and the arts, oscil­lat­ing between the realms of fantasy and prac­tic­al­ity. Her works evoke a dia­logue between the arti­fi­cial and the nat­ur­al, imbued with a grace­ful spir­itu­al­ity that exudes a fairy tale-like qual­ity. The nar­rat­ive exper­i­ence she crafts is inter­twined with a quest for inven­tion and tech­no­logy, con­sist­ently show­cas­ing the innov­at­ive and invent­ive tech­niques she employs in her art­work. Tseng’s work has been exhib­ited extens­ively in Taiwan and the United States and her work has been presen­ted in mul­tiple pub­lic col­lec­tions across the globe, which include Design Museum Port­land (USA), and Taipei Gov­ern­ment (Taiwan). Tseng cur­rently lives and works in Hsin­chu, Taiwan.